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NATIONALISM 


NATIONALISM 

SIR    RABINDRANATH   TAGORE 

NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST 

NATIONALISM    IN   JAPAN 

NATIONALISM    IN    INDIA 

THE    SUNSET   OF   THE    CENTURY 


SAN   FRANCISCO 

THE   BOOK   CLUB   OF   CALIFORNIA 
MDCCCCXVII 


J~G  3  II 


? 

/3 

COPYRIGHT,  1917,  BY  THE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  COMPANY 
COPYRIGHT,  1916  AND   1917,  BY  THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

Set  up  and  Electrotypcd 
Published  August, 


NorfoooD 

J.  8.  CuBhlng  Co.  —  Berwick  A  Smith  Oo. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


TO 
C.  F.  ANDREWS 


845596 


PREFACE 

"  Nationalism  in  the  West "  is  one  of  a  series 
of  lectures  delivered  throughout  the  United 
States  during  the  winter  of  1916-17.  "National- 
ism in  Japan"  is  based  upon  two  lectures  de- 
livered in  Japan  before  the  Imperial  University 
and  the  Keio  Gijuku  University  in  June  and  July, 
1916.  "Nationalism  in  India,"  written  in  the 
United  States  late  in  1916,  is  the  poet's  reflection 
upon  the  state  of  his  own  country,  and  gives 
world-wide  completeness  to  the  discussion  of 
Nationalism.  The  poem  at  the  conclusion  of  the 
book,  "The  Sunset  of  the  Century,"  was  written 
on  the  last  day  of  the  last  century. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

NATIONALISM  IN  THE  WEST n 

NATIONALISM  IN  JAPAN 63 

NATIONALISM  IN  INDIA ,        .  115 

THE  SUNSET  OF  THE  CENTURY 155 


NATIONALISM  IN  THE  WEST 


NATIONALISM  IN  THE  WEST 

MAN'S  history  is  being  shaped  according  tc 
the  difficulties  it  encounters.  These  have  offered 
us  problems  and  claimed  their  solutions  from  us, 
the  penalty  of  non-fulfilment  being  death  or 
degradation. 

These  difficulties  have  been  different  in  different 
peoples  of  the  earth,  and  in  the  manner  of  our 
overcoming  them  lies  our  distinction. 

The  Scythians  of  the  earlier  period  of  Asiatic 
history  had  to  struggle  with  the  scarcity  of  their 
natural  resources.  The  easiest  solution  that  they 
could  think  of  was  to  organize  their  whole  popu- 
lation, men,  women,  and  children,  into  bands  of 
robbers.  And  they  were  irresistible  to  those 
who  were  chiefly  engaged  in  the  constructive 
work  of  social  cooperation. 

But  fortunately  for  man  the  easiest  path  is  not 
his  truest  path.  If  his  nature  were  not  as  com- 
plex as  it  is,  if  it  were  as  simple  as  that  of  a  pack 

13 


14  NATIONALISM 

of  hungry  wolves,  then,  by  this  time,  those  hordes 
of  marauders  would  have  overrun  the  whole  earth. 
But  man,  when  confronted  with  difficulties,  has 
to  acknowledge  that  he  is  man,  that  he  has  his 
responsibilities  to  the  higher  faculties  of  his  nature, 
by  ignoring  -which  he  may  achieve  success  that 
is  immediate,  perhaps,  but  that  will  become  a 
death  trap  to  him.  For  what  are  obstacles  to 
the  lower  creatures  are  opportunities  to  the 
higher  life  of  man. 

To  India  has  been  given  her  problem  from  the 
beginning  of  history  —  it  is  the  race  problem. 
Races  ethnologically  different  have  come  in  this 
country  in  close  contact.  This  fact  has  been  and 
still  continues  to  be  the  most  important  one  in 
our  history.  It  is  our  mission  to  face  it  and  prove 
our  humanity  in  dealing  with  it  in  the  fullest 
truth.  Until  we  fulfil  our  mission  all  other  bene- 
fits will  be  denied  us. 

There  are  other  peoples  in  the  world  who  have 
obstacles  in  their  physical  surroundings  to  over- 
come, or  the  menace  of  their  powerful  neighbours. 
They  have  organized  their  power  till  they  are  not 
only  reasonably  free  from  the  tyranny  of  Nature 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST         15 

and  human  neighbours,  but  have  a  surplus  of  it 
left  in  their  hands  to  employ  against  others.  But 
in  India,  our  difficulties  being  internal,  our  history 
has  been  the  history  of  continual  social  adjust- 
ment and  not  that  of  organized  power  for  defence 
and  aggression. 

Neither  the  colourless  vagueness  of  cosmopoli- 
tanism, nor  the  fierce  self-idolatry  of  nation-wor- 
ship is  the  goal  of  human  history.  And  India  has 
been  trying  to  accomplish  her  task  through  social 
regulation  of  differences,  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  spiritual  recognition  of  unity,  on  the  other. 
She  has  made  grave  errors  in  setting  up  the  boun- 
dary walls  too  rigidly  between  races,  in  perpetuat- 
ing the  results  of  inferiority  in  her  classifications ; 
often  she  has  crippled  her  children's  minds  and 
narrowed  their  lives  in  order  to  fit  them  into  her 
social  forms ;  but  for  centuries  new  experiments 
have  been  made  and  adjustments  carried  out. 

Her  mission  has  been  like  that  of  a  hostess  to 
provide  proper  accommodation  to  her  numerous 
guests  whose  habits  and  requirements  are  different 
from  one  another.  It  is  giving  rise  to  infinite 
complexities  whose  solution  depends  not  merely 


16  NATIONALISM 

upon  tactfulness  but  sympathy  and  true  realiza- 
tion of  the  unity  of  man.  Towards  this  realiza- 
tion have  worked  from  the  early  time  of  the 
Upanishads  up  to  the  present  moment,  a  series  of 
great  spiritual  teachers,  whose  one  object  has  been 
to  set  at  naught  all  differences  of  man  by  the  over- 
flow of  our  consciousness  of  God.  In  fact,  our 
history  has  not  been  of  the  rise  and  fall  -of  king- 
doms, of  fights  for  political  supremacy.  In  our 
country  records  of  these  days  have  been  despised 
and  forgotten.  For  they  in  no  way  represent 
the  true  history  of  our  people.  Our  history  is 
that  of  our  social  life  and  attainment  of  spiritual 
ideals. 

But  we  feel  that  our  task  is  not  yet  done.  The 
world-flood  has  swept  over  our  country,  new  ele- 
ments have  been  introduced,  and  wider  adjust- 
ments are  waiting  to  be  made. 

We  feel  this  all  the  more,  because  the  teaching 
and  example  of  the  West  have  entirely  run  counter 
to  what  we  think  was  given  to  India  to  accom- 
plish. In  the  West  the  national  machinery  of 
commerce  and  politics  turns  out  neatly  compressed 
bales  of  humanity  which  have  their  use  and  high 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST         17 

market  value;  but  they  are  bound  in  iron  hoops, 
labelled  and  separated  off  with  scientific  care  and 
precision.  Obviously  God  made  man  to  be 
human ;  but  this  modern  product  has  such  mar- 
vellous square-cut  finish,  savouring  of  gigantic 
manufacture,  that  the  Creator  will  find  it  difficult 
to  recognize  it  as  a  thing  of  spirit  and  a  creature 
made  in  his  own  divine  image. 

But  I  am  anticipating.  What  I  was  about  to 
say  is  this,  take  it  in  whatever  spirit  you  like, 
here  is  India,  of  about  fifty  centuries  at  least, 
who  tried  to  live  peacefully  and  think  deeply, 
the  India  devoid  of  all  politics,  the  India  of  no 
nations,  whose  one  ambition  has  been  to  know 
this  world  as  of  soul,  to  live  here  every  moment 
of  her  life  in  the  meek  spirit  of  adoration,  in  the 
glad  consciousness  of  an  eternal  and  personal  re- 
lationship with  it.  This  is  the  remote  portion  of 
humanity,  childlike  in  its  manner,  with  the  wis- 
dom of  the  old,  upon  which  burst  the  Nation  of 
the  West. 

Through  all  the  fights  and  intrigues  and  decep- 
tions of  her  earlier  history  India  had  remained 
aloof.  Because  her  homes,  her  fields,  her 


18  NATIONALISM 

temples  of  worship,  her  schools,  where  her 
teachers  '  and  students  lived  together  in  the 
atmosphere  of  simplicity  and  devotion  and 
learning,  her  village  self-government  with  its 
simple  laws  and  peaceful  administration  —  all 
these  truly  belonged  to  her.  But  her  thrones 
were  not  her  concern.  They  passed  over  her  head 
like  clouds,  now  tinged  with  purple  gorgeousness, 
now  black  with  the  threat  of  thunder.  Often 
they  brought  devastations  in  their  wake,  but 
they  were  like  catastrophes  of  nature  whose  traces 
are  soon  forgotten. 

But  this  time  it  was  different.  It  was  not  a 
mere  drift  over  her  surface  of  life,  —  drift  of 
cavalry  and  foot  soldiers,  richly  caparisoned  ele- 
phants, white  tents  and  canopies,  strings  of  patient 
camels  bearing  the  loads  of  royalty,  bands  of  ket- 
tledrums and  flutes,  marble  domes  of  mosques, 
palaces  and  tombs,  like  the  bubbles  of  the  foam- 
ing wine  of  extravagance ;  stories  of  treachery 
and  loyal  devotion,  of  changes  of  fortune,  of  dra- 
matic surprises  of  fate.  This  time  it  was  the 
Nation  of  the  West  driving  its  tentacles  of  ma- 
chinery deep  down  into  the  soil. 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST         19 

Therefore,  I  say  to  you,  it  is  we  who  are  called 
as  witnesses  to  give  evidence  as  to  what  the 
Nation  has  been  to  humanity.  We  had  known 
the  hordes  of  Moghals  and  Pathans  who  invaded 
India,  but  we  had  known  them  as  human  races, 
with  their  own  religions  and  customs,  likes  and 
dislikes,  —  we  had  never  known  them  as  a  nation. 
We  loved  and  hated  them  as  occasions  arose ;  we 
fought  for  them  and  against  them,  talked  with 
them  in  a  language  which  was  theirs  as  well  as 
our  own,  and  guided  the  destiny  of  the  Empire  in 
which  we  had  our  active  share.  But  this  time 
we  had  to  deal,  not  with  kings,  not  with  human 
races,  but  with  a  nation,  —  we,  who  are  no  nation 
ourselves. 

Now  let  us  from  our  own  experience  answer 
I  the  question,  What  is  this  Nation  ? 

A  nation,  in  the  sense  of  the  political  and 
economic  union  of  a  people,  is  that  aspect  which 
a  whole  population  assumes  when  organized  for 
a  mechanical  purpose.  Society  as  such  has  no 
ulterior  purpose.  It  is  an  end  in  itself.  It  is 
a  spontaneous  self-expression  of  man  as  a  social 
being.  It  is  a  natural  regulation  of  human  rela- 


20 


NATIONALISM 


tionships,  so  that  men  can  develop  ideals  of  life  in 
cooperation  with  one  another.  It  has  also  a 
political  side,  but  this  is  only  for  a  special  purpose. 
It  is  for  self-preservation.  It  is  merely  the  side 
of  power,  not  of  human  ideals.  And  in  the  early 
days  it  had  its  separate  place  in  society,  restricted 
to  the  professionals.  But  when  with  the  help  of 
science  and  the  perfecting  of  organization  this 
power  begins  to  grow  and  brings  in  harvests  of 
wealth,  then  it  crosses  its  boundaries  with  amazing 
rapidity.  For  then  it  goads  all  its  neighbouring 
societies  with  greed  of  material  prosperity,  and 
consequent  mutual  jealousy,  and  by  the  fear  of 
each  other's  growth  into  powerfulness.  The  time 
comes  when  it  can  stop  no  longer,  for  the  com- 
petition grows  keener,  organization  grows  vaster, 
and  selfishness  attains  supremacy.  Trading  upon 
the  greed  and  fear  of  man,  it  occupies  more  and 
more  space  in  society,  and  at  last  becomes  its 
ruling  force. 

It  is  just  possible  that  you  have  lost  through 
habit  consciousness  that  the  living  bonds  of 
society  are  breaking  up,  and  giving  place  to 
merely  mechanical  organization.  But  you  see 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST         21 

signs  of  it  everywhere.  It  is  owing  to  this  that 
war  has  been  declared  between  man  and  woman, 
because  the  natural  thread  is  snapping  which 
holds  them  together  in  harmony ;  because  man  is 
driven  to  professionalism,  producing  wealth  for 
himself  and  others,  continually  turning  the  wheel 
of  power  for  his  own  sake  or  for  the  sake  of  the 
universal  officialdom,  leaving  woman  alone  to 
wither  and  to  die  or  to  fight  her  own  battle  un- 
aided. And  thus  there  where  cooperation  is 
natural  has  intruded  competition.  The  very 
psychology  of  men  and  women  about  their  mutual 
relation  is  changing  and  becoming  the  psychology 
of  the  primitive  fighting  elements  rather  than  of 
humanity  seeking  its  completeness  through  the 
union  based  upon  mutual  self-surrender.  For  the 
elements  which  have  lost  their  living  bond  of 
reality  have  lost  the  meaning  of  their  existence. 
They,  like  gaseous  particles,  forced  into  a  too 
narrow  space,  come  in  continual  conflict  with  each 
other  till  they  burst  the  very  arrangement  which 
holds  them  in  bondage. 

Then  look  at  those  who  call  themselves  anar- 
chists, who  resent  the  imposition  of  power,  in  any 


22 


NATIONALISM 


form  whatever,  upon  the  individual.  The  only 
reason  for  this  is  that  power  has  become  too 
abstract  —  it  is  a  scientific  product  made  in  the 
political  laboratory  of  the  Nation,  through  the 
dissolution  of  the  personal  humanity. 

And  what  is  the  meaning  of  these  strikes  in  the 
economic  world,  which  like  the  prickly  shrubs  in 
a  barren  soil  shoot  up  with  renewed  vigour  each 
time  they  are  cut  down  ?  What,  but  that  the 
wealth-producing  mechanism  is  incessantly  grow- 
ing into  vast  stature,  out  of  proportion  to  all 
other  needs  of  society,  —  and  the  full  reality  of 
man  is  more  and  more  crushed  under  its  weight. 
This  state  of  things  inevitably  gives  rise  to  eternal 
feuds  among  the  elements  freed  from  the  whole- 
ness and  wholesomeness  of  human  ideals,  and 
interminable  economic  war  is  waged  between 
capital  and  labour.  For  greed  of  wealth  and  power 
can  never  have  a  limit,  and  compromise  of  self- 
interest  can  never  attain  the  final  spirit  of  recon- 
ciliation. They  must  go  on  breeding  jealousy  and 
suspicion  to  the  end  —  the  end  which  only  comes 
through  some  sudden  catastrophe  or  a  spiritual 
rebirth. 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST         23 

When  this  organization  of  politics  and  com- 
merce, whose  other  name  is  the  Nation,  becomes 
all  powerful  at  the  cost  of  the  harmony  of  the 
higher  social  life,  then  it  is  an  evil  day  for  hu- 
manity. When  a  father  becomes  a  gambler  and 
his  obligations  to  his  family  take  the  secondary 
place  in  his  mind,  then  he  is  no  longer  a  man,  but 
an  automaton  led  by  the  power  of  greed.  Then 
he  can  do  things  which,  in  his  normal  state  of 
mind,  he  would  be  ashamed  to  do.  It  is  the 
same  thing  with  society.  When  it  allows  itself 
to  be  turned  into  a  perfect  organization  of  power, 
then  there  are  few  crimes  which  it  is  unable  to 
perpetrate.  Because  success  is  the  object  and 
justification  of  a  machine,  while  goodness  only  is 
the  end  and  purpose  of  man.  When  this  engine 
of  organization  begins  to  attain  a  vast  size,  and 
those  who  are  mechanics  are  made  into  parts  of 
the  machine,  then  the  personal  man  is  eliminated 
to  a  phantom,  everything  becomes  a  revolution 
of  policy  carried  out  by  the  human  parts  of  the 
machine,  requiring  no  twinge  of  pity  or  moral 
responsibility.  It  is  not  unusual  that  even 
through  this  apparatus  the  moral  nature  of  man 


24  NATIONALISM 

tries  to  assert  itself,  but  the  whole  series  of  ropes 
and  pulleys  creak  and  cry,  the  forces  of  the  human 
heart  become  entangled  among  the  forces  of  the 
human  automaton,  and  only  with  difficulty  can 
the  moral  purpose  transmit  itself  into  some  tor- 
tured shape  of  result. 

This  abstract  being,  the  Nation,  is  ruling  India. 
We  have  seen  in  our  country  some  brand  of  tinned 
food  advertised  as  entirely  made  and  packed  with- 
out being  touched  by  hand.  This  description 
applies  to  the  governing  of  India,  which  is  as 
little  touched  by  the  human  hand  as  possible. 
The  governors  need  not  know  our  language,  need 
not  come  into  personal  touch  with  us  except  as 
officials ;  they  can  aid  or  hinder  our  aspirations 
from  a  disdainful  distance,  they  can  lead  us  on  a 
certain  path  of  policy  and  then  pull  us  back  again 
with  the  manipulation  of  office  red  tape;  the 
newspapers  of  England,  in  whose  columns  Lon- 
don street  accidents  are  recorded  with  some 
decency  of  pathos,  need  but  take  the  scantiest 
notice  of  calamities  happening  in  India  over  areas 
of  land  sometimes  larger  than  the  British  Isles. 

But  we,   who   are   governed,   are   not   a   mere 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST         25 

abstraction.  We,  on  our  side,  are  individuals 
with  living  sensibilities.  What  comes  to  us  in 
the  shape  of  a  mere  bloodless  policy  may  pierce 
into  the  very  core  of  our  life,  may  threaten  the 
whole  future  of  our  people  with  a  perpetual  help- 
lessness of  emasculation,  and  yet  may  never  touch 
the  chord  of  humanity  on  the  other  side,  or  touch 
it  in  the  most  inadequately  feeble  manner.  Such 
wholesale  and  universal  acts  of  fearful  responsi- 
bility man  can  never  perform,  with  such  a  degree 
of  systematic  unawareness,  where  he  is  an  indi- 
vidual human  being.  These  only  become  pos- 
sible where  the  man  is  represented  by  an  octopus 
of  abstractions,  sending  out  its  wriggling  arms  in 
all  directions  of  space,  and  fixing  its  innumerable 
suckers  even  into  the  far-away  future.  In  this 
reign  of  the  nation,  the  governed  are  pursued  by 
suspicions ;  and  these  are  the  suspicions  of  a  tre- 
mendous mass  of  organized  brain  and  muscle. 
Punishments  are  meted  out,  leaving  a  trail  of 
miseries  across  a  large  bleeding  tract  of  the  human 
heart ;  but  these  punishments  are  dealt  by  a  mere 
abstract  force,  in  which  a  whole  population  of  a 
distant  country  has  lost  its  human  personality. 


26  NATIONALISM 

I  have  not  come  here,  however,  to  discuss  the 
question  as  it  affects  my  own  country,  but  as  it 
affects  the  future  of  all  humanity.  It  is  not 
about  the  British  Government,  but  the  govern- 
ment by  the  Nation  —  the  Nation  which  is  the 
organized  self-interest  of  a  whole  people,  where 
it  is  the  least  human  and  the  least  spiritual.  Our 
only  intimate  experience  of  the  Nation  is  with  the 
British  Nation,  and  as  far  as  the  government  by 
the  Nation  goes  there  are  reasons  to  believe  that 
it  is  one  of  the  best.  Then  again  we  have  to  con- 
sider that  the  West  is  necessary  to  the  East.  We 
are  complementary  to  each  other  because  of  our 
different  outlooks  upon  life  which  have  given  us 
different  aspects  of  truth.  Therefore  if  it  be 
true  that  the  spirit  of  the  West  has  come  upon 
our  fields  in  the  guise  of  a  storm  it  is  all  the  same 
scattering  living  seeds  that  are  immortal.  And 
when  in  India  we  shall  be  able  to  assimilate  in 
our  life  what  is  permanent  in  Western  civilization 
we  shall  be  in  the  position  to  bring  about  a  recon- 
ciliation of  these  two  great  worlds.  Then  will 
come  to  an  end  the  one-sided  dominance  which 
is  galling.  What  is  more,  we  have  to  recognize 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST         27 

that  the  history  of  India  does  not  belong  to  one 
particular  race  but  is  of  a  process  of  cre- 
ation to  which  various  races  of  the  world 
contributed  —  the  Dravidians  and  the  Aryans, 
the  ancient  Greeks  and  the  Persians,  the  Mohame- 
dans  of  the  West  and  those  of  central  Asia.  At 
last  now  has  come  the  turn  of  the  English  to  be- 
come true  to  this  history  and  bring  to  it  the  tribute 
of  their  life,  and  we  neither  have  the  right  nor  the 
power  to  exclude  this  people  from  the  building  of 
the  destiny  of  India.  Therefore  what  I  say 
about  the  Nation  has  more  to  do  with  the 
history  of  Man  than  specially  with  that  of  India. 
This  history  has  come  to  a  stage  when  the  moral 
man,  the  complete  man,  is  more  and  more  giving 
way,  almost  without  knowing  it,  to  make  room 
for  the  political  and  the  commercial  man,  the 
man  of  the  limited  purpose.  This,  aided  by  the 
wonderful  progress  in  science,  is  assuming  gigantic 
proportion  and  power,  causing  the  upset  of  man's 
moral  balance,  obscuring  his  human  side  under 
the  shadow  of  soul-less  organization.  Its  iron 
grip  we  have  felt  at  the  root  of  our  life,  and  for 
the  sake  of  humanity  we  must  stand  up  and  give 


28 


NATIONALISM 


warning  to  all,  that  this  nationalism  is  a  cruel 
epidemic  of  evil  that  is  sweeping  over  the  human 
world  of  the  present  age,  eating  into  its  moral 
vitality. 

I  have  a  deep  love  and  a  great  respect  for  the 
British  race  as  human  beings.  It  has  produced 
great-hearted  men,  thinkers  of  great  thoughts, 
doers  of  great  deeds.  It  has  given  rise  to  a  great 
literature.  I  know  that  these  people  love  justice 
and  freedom,  and  hate  lies.  They  are  clean  in 
their  minds,  frank  in  their  manners,  true  in  their 
friendships;  in  their  behaviour  they  are  honest 
and  reliable.  The  personal  experience  which  I 
have  had  of  their  literary  men  has  roused  my 
admiration  not  merely  for  their  power  of  thought 
or  expression  but  for  their  chivalrous  humanity. 
We  have  felt  the  greatness  of  this  people  as  we  feel 
the  sun ;  but  as  for  the  Nation,  it  is  for  us  a  thick 
mist  of  a  stifling  nature  covering  the  sun  itself. 

This  government  by  the  Nation  is  neither 
British  nor  anything  else ;  it  is  an  applied  science 
and  therefore  more  or  less  similar  in  its  principles 
wherever  it  is  used.  It  is  like  a  hydraulic  press, 
whose  pressure  is  impersonal  and  on  that  account 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST         29 

completely  effective.  The  amount  of  its  power 
may  vary  in  different  engines.  Some  may  even 
be  driven  by  hand,  thus  leaving  a  margin  of 
comfortable  looseness  in  their  tension,  but  in 
spirit  and  in  method  their  differences  are  small. 
Our  government  might  have  been  Dutch,  or 
French,  or  Portuguese,  and  its  essential  features 
would  have  remained  much  the  same  as  they  are 
now.  Only  perhaps,  in  some  cases,  the  organiza- 
tion might  not  have  been  so  densely  perfect,  and, 
therefore,  some  shreds  of  the  human  might  still 
have  been  clinging  to  the  wreck,  allowing  us  to 
deal  with  something  which  resembles  our  own 
throbbing  heart. 

Before  the  Nation  came  to  rule  over  us  we  had 
other  governments  which  were  foreign,  and  these, 
like  all  governments,  had  some  element  of  the 
machine  in  them.  But  the  difference  between 
them  and  the  government  by  the  Nation  is  like 
the  difference  between  the  hand  loom  and  the 
power  loom.  In  the  products  of  the  hand  loom 
the  magic  of  man's  living  ringers  finds  its  expres- 
sion, and  its  hum  harmonizes  with  the  music  of 
life.  But  the  power  loom  is  relentlessly  lifeless 
and  accurate  and  monotonous  in  its  production. 


30  NATIONALISM 

We  must  admit  that  during  the  personal  gov- 
ernment of  the  former  days  there  have  been  in- 
stances of  tyranny,  injustice  and  extortion. 
They  caused  sufferings  and  unrest  from  which  we 
are  glad  to  be  rescued.  The  protection  of  law  is 
not  only  a  boon,  but  it  is  a  valuable  lesson  to  us. 
It  is  teaching  us  the  discipline  which  is  neces- 
sary for  the  stability  of  civilization  and  conti- 
nuity of  progress.  We  are  realizing  through  it  that 
there  is  a  universal  standard  of  justice  to  which 
all  men  irrespective  of  their  caste  and  colour  have 
their  equal  claim. 

This  reign  of  law  in  our  present  Government 
in  India  has  established  order  in  this  vast  land 
inhabited  by  peoples  different  in  their  races  and 
customs.  It  has  made  it  possible  for  these  peo- 
ples to  come  in  closer  touch  with  one  another  and 
cultivate  a  communion  of  aspiration. 

But  this  desire  for  a  common  bond  of  comrade- 
ship among  the  different  races  of  India  has  been 
the  work  of  the  spirit  of  the  West,  not  that  of  the 
Nation  of  the  West.  Wherever  in  Asia  the  people 
have  received  the  true  lesson  of  the  West  it  is  in 
spite  of  the  Western  Nation.  Only  because  Japan 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST         31 

had  been  able  to  resist  the  dominance  of  this  West- 
ern Nation  could  she  acquire  the  benefit  of  the 
Western  Civilization  in  fullest  measure.  Though 
China  has  been  poisoned  at  the  very  spring  of  her 
moral  and  physical  life  by  this  Nation,  her  struggle 
to  receive  the  best  lessons  of  the  West  may  yet  be 
successful  if  not  hindered  by  the  Nation.  It  was 
only  the  other  day  that  Persia  woke  up  from 
her  age-long  sleep  at  the  call  of  the  West  to  be 
instantly  trampled  into  stillness  by  the  Nation. 
The  same  phenomenon  prevails  in  this  country  also, 
where  the  people  are  hospitable  but  the  nation  has 
proved  itself  to  be  otherwise,  making  an  Eastern 
guest  feel  humiliated  to  stand  before  you  as  a 
member  of  the  humanity  of  his  own  mother- 
land. 

In  India  we  are  suffering  from  this  conflict  be- 
tween the  spirit  of  the  West  and  the  Nation  of  the 
West.  The  benefit  of  the  Western  civilization  is 
doled  out  to  us  in  a  miserly  measure  by  the 
Nation  trying  to  regulate  the  degree  of  nutrition 
as  near  the  zero  point  of  vitality  as  possible. 
The  portion  of  education  allotted  to  us  is  so 
raggedly  insufficient  that  it  ought  to  outrage  the 


32  NATIONALISM 

sense  of  decency  of  a  Western  humanity.  We 
have  seen  in  these  countries  how  the  people  are 
encouraged  and  trained  and  given  every  facility 
to  fit  themselves  for  the  great  movements  of 
commerce  and  industry  spreading  over  the  world, 
while  in  India  the  only  assistance  we  get  is  merely 
to  be  jeered  at  by  the  Nation  for  lagging  behind. 
While  depriving  us  of  our  opportunities- and  re- 
ducing our  education  to  a  minimum  required  for 
conducting  a  foreign  government,  this  Nation 
pacifies  its  conscience  by  calling  us  names,  by 
sedulously  giving  currency  to  the  arrogant  cyni- 
cism that  the  East  is  east  and  the  West  is  west 
and  never  the  twain  shall  meet.  If  we  must  be- 
lieve our  schoolmaster  in  his  taunt  that  after 
nearly  two  centuries  of  his  tutelage,  India  not 
only  remains  unfit  for  self-government  but  unable 
to  display  originality  in  her  intellectual  attain- 
ments, must  we  ascribe  it  to  something  in  the 
nature  of  Western  culture  and  our  inherent  in- 
capacity to  receive  it  or  to  the  judicious  niggard- 
liness of  the  Nation  that  has  taken  upon  itself 
the  white  man's  burden  of  civilizing  the  East  ? 
That  Japanese  people  have  some  qualities  which 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST         33 

we  lack  we  may  admit,  but  that  our  intellect  is 
naturally  unproductive  compared  to  theirs  we 
cannot  accept  even  from  them  whom  it  is  danger- 
ous for  us  to  contradict. 

The  truth  is  that  the  spirit  of  conflict  and  con- 
quest is  at  the  origin  and  in  the  centre  of  the 
Western  nationalism ;  its  basis  is  not  social  co- 
operation. It  has  evolved  a  perfect  organization 
of  power  but  not  spiritual  idealism.  It  is  like 
the  pack  of  predatory  creatures  that  must  have 
its  victims.  With  all  its  heart  it  cannot  bear  to 
see  its  hunting  grounds  converted  into  cultivated 
fields.  In  fact,  these  nations  are  fighting  among 
themselves  for  the  extension  of  their  victims 
and  their  reserve  forests.  Therefore  the  Western 
Nation  acts  like  a  dam  to  check  the  free  flow  of 
the  Western  civilization  into  the  country  of  the 
No-Nation.  Because  this  civilization  is  the  civili- 
zation of  power,  therefore  it  is  exclusive,  it  is 
naturally  unwilling  to  open  its  sources  of  power 
to  those  whom  it  has  selected  for  its  purposes  of 
exploitation. 

But  all  the  same  moral  law  is  the  law  of  hu- 
manity, and  the  exclusive  civilization  which 


34  NATIONALISM 

thrives  upon  others  who  are  barred  from  its  benefit 
carries  its  own  death  sentence  in  its  moral  limi- 
tations. The  slavery  that  it  gives  rise  to  uncon- 
sciously drains  its  own  love  of  freedom  dry. 
The  helplessness  with  which  it  weighs  down  its 
world  of  victims  exerts  its  force  of  gravitation 
every  moment  upon  the  power  that  creates  it. 
And  the  greater  part  of  the  world  which- is  being 
denuded  of  its  self-sustaining  life  by  the  Nation 
will  one  day  become  the  most  terrible  of  all  its 
burdens  ready  to  drag  it  down  into  the  bottom 
of  destruction.  Whenever  Power  removes  all 
checks  from  its  path  to  make  its  career  easy,  it 
triumphantly  rides  into  its  ultimate  crash  of 
death.  Its  moral  brake  becomes  slacker  every 
day  without  its  knowing  it,  and  its  slippery  path 
of  ease  becomes  its  path  of  doom. 

Of  all  things  in  Western  civilization,  those 
which  this  Western  Nation  has  given  us  in  a 
most  generous  measure  are  law  and  order.  While 
the  small  feeding  bottle  of  our  education  is  nearly 
dry,  and  sanitation  sucks  its  own  thumb  in  de- 
spair, the  military  organization,  the  magisterial 
offices,  the  police,  the  Criminal  Investigation 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST         35 

Department,  the  secret  spy  system,  attain  to  an 
abnormal  girth  in  their  waists,  occupying  every 
inch  of  our  country.  This  is  to  maintain  order. 
But  is  not  this  order  merely  a  negative  good  ? 
Is  it  not  for  giving  people's  life  greater  oppor- 
tunities for  the  freedom  of  development  ?  Its 
perfection  is  the  perfection  of  an  egg-shell  whose 
true  value  lies  in  the  security  it  affords  to  the 
chick  and  its  nourishment  and  not  in  the  con- 
venience it  offers  to  the  person  at  the  breakfast 
table.  Mere  administration  is  unproductive, 
it  is  not  creative,  not  being  a  living  thing.  It  is 
a  steam-roller,  formidable  in  its  weight  and 
power,  having  its  uses,  but  it  does  not  help  the 
soil  to  become  fertile.  When  after  its  enormous 
toil  it  comes  to  offer  us  its  boon  of  peace  we  can 
but  murmur  under  our  breath  that  "peace  is 
good  but  not  more  so  than  life  which  is  God's 
own  great  boon.'' 

On  the  other  hand,  our  former  governments 
were  wofully  lacking  in  many  of  the  advantages 
of  the  modern  government.  But  because  those 
were  not  the  governments  by  the  Nation,  their 
texture  was  loosely  woven,  leaving  big  gaps 


36  NATIONALISM 

through  which  our  own  life  sent  its  threads  and 
imposed  its  designs.  I  am  quite  sure  in  those 
days  we  had  things  that  were  extremely  distaste- 
ful to  us.  But  we  know  that  when  we  walk 
barefooted  upon  a  ground  strewn  with  gravel, 
gradually  our  feet  come  to  adjust  themselves  to 
the  caprices  of  the  inhospitable  earth ;  while  if 
the  tiniest  particle  of  a  gravel  finds  its  lodg- 
ment inside  our  shoes  we  can  never  forget  and 
forgive  its  intrusion.  And  these  shoes  are  the 
government  by  the  Nation,  —  it  is  tight,  it  regu- 
lates our  steps  with  a  closed  up  system,  within 
which  our  feet  have  only  the  slightest  liberty  to 
make  their  own  adjustments.  Therefore,  when 
you  produce  your  statistics  to  compare  the  num- 
ber of  gravels  which  our  feet  had  to  encounter 
in  former  days  with  the  paucity  in  the  present 
regime,  they  hardly  touch  the  real  points.  It  is 
not  the  numerousness  of  the  outside  obstacles 
but  the  comparative  powerlessness  of  the  indi- 
vidual to  cope  with  them.  This  narrowness  of 
freedom  is  an  evil  which  is  more  radical  not  be- 
cause of  its  quantity  but  because  of  its  nature. 
And  we  cannot  but  acknowledge  this  paradox, 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST         37 

that  while  the  spirit  of  the  West  marches  under 
its  banner  of  freedom,  the  Nation  of  the  West 
forges  its  iron  chains  of  organization  which  are 
the  most  relentless  and  unbreakable  that  have 
ever  been  manufactured  in  the  whole  history  of 
man. 

When  the  humanity  of  India  was  not  under 
the  government  of  the  Organization,  the  elas- 
ticity of  change  was  great  enough  to  encourage 
men  of  power  and  spirit  to  feel  that  they  had 
their  destinies  in  their  own  hands.  The  hope 
of  the  unexpected  was  never  absent,  and  a 
freer  play  of  imagination,  both  on  the  part  of 
the  governor  and  the  governed,  had  its  effect  in 
the  making  of  history.  We  were  not  confronted 
with  a  future  which  was  a  dead  white  wall  of 
granite  blocks  eternally  guarding  against  the  ex- 
pression and  extension  of  our  own  powers,  the 
hopelessness  of  which  lies  in  the  reason  that 
these  powers  are  becoming  atrophied  at  their 
very  roots  by  the  scientific  process  of  paralysis. 
For  every  single  individual  in  the  country  of  the 
no-nation  is  completely  in  the  grip  of  a  whole  na- 
tion, —  whose  tireless  vigilance,  being  the  vigi- 


38  NATIONALISM 

lance  of  a  machine,  has  not  the  human  power  to 
overlook  or  to  discriminate.  At  the  least  press- 
ing of  its  button  the  monster  organization  becomes 
all  eyes,  whose  ugly  stare  of  inquisitiveness  cannot 
be  avoided  by  a  single  person  amongst  the  im- 
mense multitude  of  the  ruled.  At  the  least  turn 
of  its  screw,  by  the  fraction  of  an  inch,  the  grip 
is  tightened  to  the  point  of  sufTocatioa  around 
every  man,  woman  and  child  of  a  vast  popula- 
tion, for  whom  no  escape  is  imaginable  in  their 
own  country,  or  even  in  any  country  outside 
their  own. 

It  is  the  continual  and  stupendous  dead  press- 
ure of  this  unhuman  upon  the  living  human 
under  which  the  modern  world  is  groaning.  Not 
merely  the  subject  races,  but  you  who  live  under 
the  delusion  that  you  are  free,  are  every  day 
sacrificing  your  freedom  and  humanity  to  this 
fetich  of  nationalism,  living  in  the  dense  poison- 
ous atmosphere  of  world-wide  suspicion  and  greed 
and  panic. 

I  have  seen  in  Japan  the  voluntary  submission 
of  the  whole  people  to  the  trimming  of  their 
minds  and  clipping  of  their  freedom  by  their 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST         39 

government,  which  through  various  educational 
agencies  regulates  their  thoughts,  manufactures 
their  feelings,  becomes  suspiciously  watchful  when 
they  show  signs  of  inclining  toward  the  spiritual, 
leading  them  through  a  narrow  path  not  toward 
what  is  true  but  what  is  necessary  for  the  com- 
plete welding  of  them  into  one  uniform  mass 
according  to  its  own  recipe.  The  people  accept 
this  all-pervading  mental  slavery  with  cheerfulness 
and  pride  because  of  their  nervous  desire  to  turn 
themselves  into  a  machine  of  power,  called  the 
Nation,  and  emulate  other  machines  in  their 
collective  worldliness. 

When  questioned  as  to  the  wisdom  of  its  course 
the  newly  converted  fanatic  of  nationalism  answers 
that  "so  long  as  nations  are  rampant  in  this 
world  we  have  not  the  option  freely  to  develop 
our  higher  humanity.  We  must  utilize  every 
faculty  that  we  possess  to  resist  the  evil  by  as- 
suming it  ourselves  in  the  fullest  degree.  For 
the  only  brotherhood  possible  in  the  modern 
world  is  the  brotherhood  of  hooliganism."  The 
recognition  of  the  fraternal  bond  of  love  between 
Japan  and  Russia,  which  has  lately  been  cele- 


40  NATIONALISM 

brated  with  an  immense  display  of  rejoicing  in 
Japan,  was  not  owing  to  any  sudden  recrudescence 
of  the  spirit  of  Christianity  or  of  Buddhism,  — 
but  it  was  a  bond  established  according  to  the 
modern  faith  in  a  surer  relationship  of  mutual 
menace  of  bloodshedding.  Yes,  one  cannot  but 
acknowledge  that  these  facts  are  the  facts  of  the 
world  of  the  Nation,  and  the  only  moral,  of  it  is 
that  all  the  peoples  of  the  earth  should  strain 
their  physical,  moral  and  intellectual  resources 
to  the  utmost  to  defeat  one  another  in  the  wrest- 
ling match  of  powerfulness.  In  the  ancient  days 
Sparta  paid  all  her  attention  to  becoming  powerful 
—  and  she  did  become  so  by  crippling  her  hu- 
manity, and  she  died  of  the  amputation. 

But  it  is  no  consolation  to  us  to  know  that  the 
weakening  of  humanity  from  which  the  present 
age  is  suffering  is  not  limited  to  the  subject 
races,  and  that  its  ravages  are  even  more  radical 
because  insidious  and  voluntary  in  peoples  who 
are  hypnotized  into  believing  that  they  are  free. 
This  bartering  of  your  higher  aspirations  of  life 
for  profit  and  power  has  been  your  own  free 
choice,  and  I  leave  you  there,  at  the  wreckage  of 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST        41 

your  soul,  contemplating  your  protuberant  pros- 
perity. But  will  you  never  be  called  to  answer 
for  organizing  the  instincts  of  self-aggrandizement 
of  whole  peoples  into  perfection,  and  calling  it 
good  ?  I  ask  you  what  disaster  has  there  ever 
been  in  the  history  of  man,  in  its  darkest  period, 
like  this  terrible  disaster  of  the  Nation  fixing  its 
fangs  deep  into  the  naked  flesh  of  the  world, 
taking  permanent  precautions  against  its  natural 
relaxation  ? 

You,  the  people  of  the  West,  who  have  manu- 
factured this  abnormality,  can  you  imagine  the 
desolating  despair  of  this  haunted  world  of  suffer- 
ing man  possessed  by  the  ghastly  abstraction  of 
the  organizing  man  ?  Can  you  put  yourself  into 
the  position  of  the  peoples,  who  seem  to  have 
been  doomed  to  an  eternal  damnation  of  their 
own  humanity,  who  not  only  must  suffer  con- 
tinual curtailment  of  their  manhood,  but  even 
raise  their  voices  in  paeans  of  praise  for  the 
benignity  of  a  mechanical  apparatus  in  its  inter- 
minable parody  of  providence  ? 

Have  you  not  seen,  since  the  commencement 
of  the  existence  of  the  Nation,  that  the  dread  of 


42  NATIONALISM 

it  has  been  the  one  goblin-dread  with  which  the 
whole  world  has  been  trembling?  Wherever 
there  is  a  dark  corner,  there  is  the  suspicion  of 
its  secret  malevolence ;  and  people  live  in  a  per- 
petual distrust  of  its  back  where  it  has  no  eyes. 
Every  sound  of  footstep,  every  rustle  of  move- 
ment in  the  neighbourhood,  sends  a  thrill  of  terror 
all  around.  And  this  terror  is  the  parejit  of  all 
that  is  base  in  man's  nature.  It  makes  one  al- 
most openly  unashamed  of  inhumanity.  Clever 
lies  become  matters  of  self-congratulation. 
Solemn  pledges  become  a  farce,  —  laughable  for 
their  very  solemnity.  The  Nation,  with  all  its 
paraphernalia  of  power  and  prosperity,  its  flags 
and  pious  hymns,  its  blasphemous  prayers  in  the 
churches,  and  the  literary  mock  thunders  of  its 
patriotic  bragging,  cannot  hide  the  fact  that  the 
Nation  is  the  greatest  evil  for  the  Nation,  that 
all  its  precautions  are  against  it,  and  any  new 
birth  of  its  fellow  in  the  world  is  always  followed 
in  its  mind  by  the  dread  of  a  new  peril.  Its  one 
wish  is  to  trade  on  the  feebleness  of  the  rest  of 
the  world,  like  some  insects  that  are  bred  in  the 
paralyzed  flesh  of  victims  kept  just  enough  alive 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST        43 

to  make  them  toothsome  and  nutritious.  There- 
fore it  is  ready  to  send  its  poisonous  fluid  into  the 
vitals  of  the  other  living  peoples,  who,  not  being 
nations,  are  harmless.  For  this  the  Nation  has 
had  and  still  has  its  richest  pasture  in  Asia. 
Great  China,  rich  with  her  ancient  wisdom  and 
social  ethics,  her  discipline  of  industry  and  self- 
control,  is  like  a  whale  awakening  the  lust  of 
spoil  in  the  heart  of  the  Nation.  She  is  already 
carrying  in  her  quivering  flesh  harpoons  sent  by 
the  unerring  aim  of  the  Nation,  the  creature  of 
science  and  selfishness.  Her  pitiful  attempt  to 
shake  off  her  traditions  of  humanity,  her  social 
ideals,  and  spend  her  last  exhausted  resources  to 
drill  herself  into  modern  efficiency,  is  thwarted 
at  every  step  by  the  Nation.  It  is  tightening  its 
financial  ropes  round  her,  trying  to  drag  her  up 
on  the  shore  and  cut  her  into  pieces,  and  then 
go  and  offer  public  thanksgiving  to  God  for 
supporting  the  one  existing  evil  and  shattering 
the  possibility  of  a  new  one.  And  for  all  this 
the  Nation  has  been  claiming  the  gratitude  of 
history,  and  all  eternity  for  its  exploitation ; 
ordering  its  band  of  praise  to  be  struck  up  from 


44  NATIONALISM 

end  to  end  of  the  world,  declaring  itself  to  be  the 
salt  of  the  earth,  the  flower  of  humanity,  the 
blessing  of  God  hurled  with  all  his  force  upon  the 
naked  skulls  of  the  world  of  no  nations. 

I  know  what  your  advice  will  be.  You  will 
say,  form  yourselves  into  a  nation,  and  resist 
this  encroachment  of  the  Nation.  But  is  this 
the  true  advice  ?  that  of  a  man  to  a  man  ?•  Why 
should  this  be  a  necessity  ?  I  could  well  believe 
you,  if  you  had  said,  Be  more  good,  more  just, 
more  true  in  your  relation  to  man,  control  your 
greed,  make  your  life  wholesome  in  its  simplicity 
and  let  your  consciousness  of  the  divine  in  hu- 
manity be  more  perfect  in  its  expression.  But 
must  you  say  that  it  is  not  the  soul,  but  the 
machine,  which  is  of  the  utmost  value  to  our- 
selves, and  that  man's  salvation  depends  upon 
his  disciplining  himself  into  a  perfection  of  the 
dead  rhythm  of  wheels  and  counterwheels  ?  that 
machine  must  be  pitted  against  machine,  and 
nation  against  nation,  in  an  endless  bull-fight  of 
politics  ? 

You  say,  these  machines  will  come  into  an 
agreement,  for  their  mutual  protection,  based 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST        45 

upon  a  conspiracy  of  fear.  But  will  this  federa- 
tion of  steam-boilers  supply  you  with  a  soul,  a 
soul  which  has  her  conscience  and  her  God  ? 
What  is  to  happen  to  that  larger  part  of  the 
world,  where  fear  will  have  no  hand  in  restraining 
you  ?  Whatever  safety  they  now  enjoy,  those 
countries  of  no  nation,  from  the  unbridled  license 
of  forge  and  hammer  and  turn-screw,  results  from 
the  mutual  jealousy  of  the  powers.  But  when, 
instead  of  being  numerous  separate  machines, 
they  become  riveted  into  one  organized  gre- 
gariousness  of  gluttony,  commercial  and  political, 
what  remotest  chance  of  hope  will  remain  for 
those  others,  who  have  lived  and  suffered,  have 
loved  and  worshipped,  have  thought  deeply  and 
worked  with  meekness,  but  whose  only  crime  has 
been  that  they  have  not  organized  ? 

But,  you  say,  "That  does  not  matter,  the  unfit 
must  go  to  the  wall  —  they  shall  die,  and  this  is 
science." 

No,  for  the  sake  of  your  own  salvation,  I  say, 
they  shall  live,  and  this  is  truth.  It  is  extremely 
bold  of  me  to  say  so,  but  I  assert  that  man's 
world  is  a  moral  world,  not  because  we  blindly 


46  NATIONALISM 

agree  to  believe  it,  but  because  it  is  so  in  truth 
which  would  be  dangerous  for  us  to  ignore.  And 
this  moral  nature  of  man  cannot  be  divided  into 
convenient  compartments  for  its  preservation. 
You  cannot  secure  it  for  your  home  consump- 
tion with  protective  tariff  walls,  while  in  foreign 
parts  making  it  enormously  accommodating  in 
its  free  trade  of  license. 

Has  not  this  truth  already  come  home  to  you 
now,  when  this  cruel  war  has  driven  its  claws 
into  the  vitals  of  Europe  ?  when  her  hoard  of 
wealth  is  bursting  into  smoke  and  her  humanity 
is  shattered  into  bits  on  her  battlefields  ?  You 
ask  in  amazement  what  has  she  done  to  deserve 
this  ?  The  answer  is,  that  the  West  has  been 
systematically  petrifying  her  moral  nature  in 
order  to  lay  a  solid  foundation  for  her  gigantic 
abstractions  of  efficiency.  She  has  all  along  been 
starving  the  life  of  the  personal  man  into  that  of 
the  professional. 

In  your  mediaeval  age  in  Europe,  the  simple  and 
the  natural  man,  with  all  his  violent  passions  and 
desires,  was  engaged  in  trying  to  find  out  a  rec- 
onciliation in  the  conflict  between  the  flesh  and 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST        47 

the  spirit.  All  through  the  turbulent  career  of 
her  vigorous  youth  the  temporal  and  the  spiritual 
forces  both  acted  strongly  upon  her  nature,  and 
were  moulding  it  into  completeness  of  moral 
personality.  Europe  owes  all  her  greatness 
in  humanity  to  that  period  of  discipline,  — 
the  discipline  of  the  man  in  his  human  integ- 
rity. 

Then  came  the  age  of  intellect,  of  science. 
We  all  know  that  intellect  is  impersonal.  Our 
life  is  one  with  us,  also  our  heart,  but  our  mind 
can  be  detached  from  the  personal  man  and  then 
only  can  it  freely  move  in  its  world  of  thoughts. 
Our  intellect  is  an  ascetic  who  wears  no  clothes, 
takes  no  food,  knows  no  sleep,  has  no  wishes, 
feels  no  love  or  hatred  or  pity  for  human  limita- 
tions, who  only  reasons,  unmoved  through  the 
vicissitudes  of  life.  It  burrows  to  the  roots  of 
things,  because  it  has  no  personal  concern  with 
the  thing  itself.  The  grammarian  walks  straight 
through  all  poetry  and  goes  to  the  root  of  words 
without  obstruction.  Because  he  is  not  seeking 
reality,  but  law.  When  he  finds  the  law,  he  is 
able  to  teach  people  how  to  master  words.  This 


48  NATIONALISM 

is  a  power,  —  the  power  which  fulfils  some  special 
usefulness,  some  particular  need  of  man. 

Reality  is  the  harmony  which  gives  to  the 
component  parts  of  a  thing  the  equilibrium  of 
the  whole.  You  break  it,  and  have  in  your  hands 
the  nomadic  atoms  fighting  against  one  another, 
therefore  unmeaning.  Those  who  covet  power 
try  to  get  mastery  of  these  aboriginal-  fighting 
elements  and  through  some  narrow  channels 
force  them  into  some  violent  service  for  some 
particular  needs  of  man. 

This  satisfaction  of  man's  needs  is  a  great 
thing.  It  gives  him  freedom  in  the  material 
world.  It  confers  on  him  the  benefit  of  a  greater 
range  of  time  and  space.  He  can  do  things  in  a 
shorter  time  and  occupies  a  larger  space  with 
more  thoroughness  of  advantage.  Therefore  he 
can  easily  outstrip  those  who  live  in  a  world  of  a 
slower  time  and  of  space  less  fully  occupied. 

This  progress  of  power  attains  more  and  more 
rapidity  of  pace.  And,  for  the  reason  that  it  is  a 
detached  part  of  man,  it  soon  outruns  the  com- 
plete humanity.  The  moral  man  remains  behind, 
because  it  has  to  deal  with  the  whole  reality,  not 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST        49 

merely  with  the  law  of  things,  which  is  impersonal 
and  therefore  abstract. 

Thus,  man  with  his  mental  and  material  power 
far  outgrowing  his  moral  strength,  is  like  an  ex- 
aggerated giraffe  whose  head  has  suddenly  shot 
up  miles  away  from  the  rest  of  him,  making  normal 
communication  difficult  to  establish.  This  greedy 
head,  with  its  huge  dental  organization,  has  been 
munching  all  the  topmost  foliage  of  the  world, 
but  the  nourishment  is  too  late  in  reaching  his 
digestive  organs,  and  his  heart  is  suffering  from 
want  of  blood.  Of  this  present  disharmony  in 
man's  nature  the  West  seems  to  have  been  bliss- 
fully unconscious.  The  enormity  of  its  material 
success  has  diverted  all  its  attention  toward 
self-congratulation  on  its  bulk.  The  optimism  of 
its  logic  goes  on  basing  the  calculations  of  its 
good  fortune  upon  the  indefinite  prolongation  of 
its  railway  lines  toward  eternity.  It  is  superficial 
enough  to  think  that  all  to-morrows  are  merely 
to-days  with  the  repeated  additions  of  twenty- 
four  hours.  It  has  no  fear  of  the  chasm,  which 
is  opening  wider  every  day,  between  man's 
ever-growing  storehouses  and  the  emptiness  of 


50  NATIONALISM 

his  hungry  humanity.  Logic  does  not  know 
that,  under  the  lowest  bed  of  endless  strata  of 
wealth  and  comforts,  earthquakes  are  being 
hatched  to  restore  the  balance  of  the  moral 
world,  and  one  day  the  gaping  gulf  of  spiritual 
vacuity  will  draw  into  its  bottom  the  store  of 
things  that  have  their  eternal  love  for  the  dust. 

Man  in  his  fulness  is  not  powerful,  but  perfect. 
Therefore,  to  turn  him  into  mere  power,  you 
have  to  curtail  his  soul  as  much  as  possible. 
When  we  are  fully  human,  we  cannot  fly  at  one 
another's  throats;  our  instincts  of  social  life, 
our  traditions  of  moral  ideals  stand  in  the  way. 
If  you  want  me  to  take  to  butchering  human 
beings,  you  must  break  up  that  wholeness  of 
my  humanity  through  some  discipline  which 
makes  my  will  dead,  my  thoughts  numb,  my 
movements  automatic,  and  then  from  the  dis- 
solution of  the  complex  personal  man  will  come 
out  that  abstraction,  that  destructive  force,  which 
has  no  relation  to  human  truth,  and  therefore 
can  be  easily  brutal  or  mechanical.  Take  away 
man  from  his  natural  surroundings,  from  the  ful- 
ness of  his  communal  life,  with  all  its  living 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST         51 

associations  of  beauty  and  love  and  social  ob- 
ligations, and  you  will  be  able  to  turn  him  into 
so  many  fragments  of  a  machine  for  the  produc- 
tion of  wealth  on  a  gigantic  scale.  Turn  a  tree 
into  a  log  and  it  will  burn  for  you,  but  it  will 
never  bear  living  flowers  and  fruit. 

This  process  of  dehumanizing  has  been  going 
on  in  commerce  and  politics.  And  out  of  the 
long  birth-throes  of  mechanical  energy  has  been 
born  this  fully  developed  apparatus  of  magnificent 
power  and  surprising  appetite,  which  has  been 
christened  in  the  West  as  the  Nation.  As  I  have 
hinted  before,  because  of  its  quality  of  abstraction 
it  has,  with  the  greatest  ease,  gone  far  ahead  of 
the  complete  moral  man.  And  having  the  con- 
science of  a  ghost  and  the  callous  perfection  of  an 
automaton,  it  is  causing  disasters  of  which  the 
volcanic  dissipations  of  the  youthful  moon  would 
be  ashamed  to  be  brought  into  comparison.  As 
a  result,  the  suspicion  of  man  for  man  stings  all 
the  limbs  of  this  civilization  like  the  hairs  of  the 
nettle.  Each  country  is  casting  its  net  of  es- 
pionage into  the  slimy  bottom  of  the  others, 
fishing  for  their  secrets,  the  treacherous  secrets 


52  NATIONALISM 

brewing  in  the  oozy  depths  of  diplomacy.  And 
what  is  their  secret  service  but  the  nation's 
underground  trade  in  kidnapping,  murder  and 
treachery  and  all  the  ugly  crimes  bred  in  the 
depth  of  rottenness  ?  Because  each  nation  has 
its  own  history  of  thieving  and  lies  and  broken 
faith,  therefore  there  can  only  flourish  inter- 
national suspicion  and  jealousy,  and  international 
moral  shame  becomes  anaemic  to  a  degree  of 
ludicrousness.  The  nation's  bagpipe  of  righteous 
indignation  has  so  often  changed  its  tune  accord- 
ing to  the  variation  of  time  and  to  the  altered 
groupings  of  the  alliances  of  diplomacy,  that  it 
can  be  enjoyed  with  amusement  as  the  variety 
performance  of  the  political  music  hall. 

I  am  just  coming  from  my  visit  to  Japan,  where 
I  exhorted  this  young  nation  to  take  its  stand 
upon  the  higher  ideals  of  humanity  and  never 
to  follow  the  West  in  its  acceptance  of  the  or- 
ganized selfishness  of  Nationalism  as  its  religion, 
never  to  gloat  upon  the  feebleness  of  its  neighbours, 
never  to  be  unscrupulous  in  its  behaviour  to  the 
weak,  where  it  can  be  gloriously  mean  with  im- 
punity, while  turning  its  right  cheek  of  brighter 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST         53 

humanity  for  the  kiss  of  admiration  to  those  who 
have  the  power  to  deal  it  a  blow.  Some  of  the 
newspapers  praised  my  utterances  for  their  poetical 
qualities  while  adding  with  a  leer  that  it  was  the 
poetry  of  a  defeated  people.  I  felt  they  were 
right.  Japan  had  been  taught  in  a  modern  school 
the  lesson  how  to  become  powerful.  The  school- 
ing is  done  and  she  must  enjoy  the  fruits  of  her 
lessons.  The  West  in  the  voice  of  her  thundering 
cannon  had  said  at  the  door  of  Japan,  Let  there 
be  a  nation  —  and  there  was  a  Nation.  And  now 
that  it  has  come  into  existence,  why  do  you  not 
feel  in  your  heart  of  hearts  a  pure  feeling  of 
gladness  and  say  that  it  is  good  ?  Why  is  it 
that  I  saw  in  an  English  paper  an  expression  of 
bitterness  at  Japan's  boasting  of  her  superiority 
of  civilization  —  the  thing  that  the  British,  along 
with  other  nations,  has  been  carrying  on  for 
ages  without  blushing  ?  Because  the  idealism  of 
selfishness  must  keep  itself  drunk  with  a  con- 
tinual dose  of  self-laudation.  But  the  same  vices 
which  seem  so  natural  and  innocuous  in  its  own 
life  make  it  surprised  and  angry  at  their  un- 
pleasantness when  seen  in  other  nations.  There- 


54  NATIONALISM 


fore  when  you  see  the  Japanese  nation,  created 
in  your  own  image,  launched  in  its  career  of 
national  boastfulness  you  shake  your  head  and 
say  it  is  not  good.  Has  it  not  been  one  of  the 
causes  that  raise  the  cry  on  these  shores  for 
preparedness  to  meet  one  more  power  of  evil 
with  a  greater  power  of  injury  ?  Japan  protests 
that  she  has  her  bushido,  that  she  can  -never  be 
treacherous  to  America  to  whom  she  owes  her 
gratitude.  But  you  find  it  difficult  to  believe 
her,  —  for  the  wisdom  of  the  Nation  is  not  in 
its  faith  in  humanity  but  in  its  complete  distrust. 
You  say  to  yourself  that  it  is  not  with  Japan  of 
the  bushido,  the  Japan  of  the  moral  ideals,  that 
you  have  to  deal  —  it  is  with  the  abstraction  of 
the  popular  selfishness,  it  is  with  the  Nation ; 
and  Nation  can  only  trust  Nation  where  their 
interests  coalesce,  or  at  least  do  not  conflict. 
In  fact  your  instinct  tells  you  that  the  advent 
of  another  people  into  the  arena  of  nationality 
makes  another  addition  to  the  evil  which  contra- 
dicts all  that  is  highest  in  Man  and  proves  by 
its  success  that  unscrupulousness  is  the  way  to 
prosperity,  —  and  goodness  is  good  for  the  weak 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST         55 

and  God  is  the  only  remaining  consolation  of  the 
defeated. 

Yes,  this  is  the  logic  of  the  Nation.  And  it 
will  never  heed  the  voice  of  truth  and  goodness. 
It  will  go  on  in  its  ring-dance  of  moral  corrup- 
tion, linking  steel  unto  steel,  and  machine  unto 
machine ;  trampling  under  its  tread  all  the  sweet 
flowers  of  simple  faith  and  the  living  ideals  of 
man. 

But  we  delude  ourselves  into  thinking  that 
humanity  in  the  modern  days  is  more  to  the 
front  than  ever  before.  The  reason  of  this  self- 
delusion  is  because  man  is  served  with  the  neces- 
saries of  life  in  greater  profusion  and  his  physical 
ills  are  being  alleviated  with  more  efficacy.  But 
the  chief  part  of  this  is  done,  not  by  moral  sacrifice, 
but  by  intellectual  power.  In  quantity  it  is  great, 
but  it  springs  from  the  surface  and  spreads  over 
the  surface.  Knowledge  and  efficiency  are  power- 
ful in  their  outward  effect,  but  they  are  the 
servants  of  man,  not  the  man  himself.  Their 
service  is  like  the  service  in  a  hotel,  where  it  is 
elaborate,  but  the  host  is  absent;  it  is  more  con- 
venient than  hospitable. 


56  NATIONALISM 

Therefore  we  must  not  forget  that  the  scientific 
organizations  vastly  spreading  in  all  directions 
are  strengthening  our  power,  but  not  our  hu- 
manity. With  the  growth  of  power  the  cult  of 
the  self-worship  of  the  Nation  grows  in  ascen- 
dency ;  and  the  individual  willingly  allows  the 
nation  to  take  donkey  rides  upon  his  back ;  and 
there  happens  the  anomaly  which  must  have  its 
disastrous  effects,  that  the  individual  worships 
with  all  sacrifices  a  god  which  is  morally  much 
inferior  to  himself.  This  could  never  have  been 
possible  if  the  god  had  been  as  real  as  the  in- 
dividual. 

Let  me  give  an  illustration  of  this  in  point. 
In  some  parts  of  India  it  has  been  enjoined  as 
an  act  of  great  piety  for  a  widow  to  go  without 
food  and  water  on  a  particular  day  every  fort- 
night. This  often  leads  to  cruelty,  unmeaning 
and  inhuman.  And  yet  men  are  not  by  nature 
cruel  to  such  a  degree.  But  this  piety  being  a 
mere  unreal  abstraction  completely  deadens  the 
moral  sense  of  the  individual,  just  as  the  man 
who  would  not  hurt  an  animal  unnecessarily, 
would  cause  horrible  suffering  to  a  large  number 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST         57 

of  innocent  creatures  when  he  drugs  his  feelings 
with  the  abstract  idea  of  "sport."  Because 
these  ideas  are  the  creations  of  our  intellect,  be- 
cause they  are  logical  classifications,  therefore  they 
can  so  easily  hide  in  their  mist  the  personal  man. 

And  the  idea  of  the  Nation  is  one  of  the  most 
powerful  anaesthetics  that  man  has  invented. 
Under  the  influence  of  its  fumes  the  whole  people 
can  carry  out  its  systematic  programme  of  the 
most  virulent  self-seeking  without  being  in  the 
least  aware  of  its  moral  perversion,  —  in  fact 
feeling  dangerously  resentful  if  it  is  pointed  out. 

But  can  this  go  on  indefinitely  ?  continually 
producing  barrenness  of  moral  insensibility  upon 
a  large  tract  of  our  living  nature  ?  Can  it  escape 
its  nemesis  forever  ?  Has  this  giant  power  of 
mechanical  organization  no  limit  in  this  world 
against  which  it  may  shatter  itself  all  the  more 
completely  because  of  its  terrible  strength  and 
velocity  ?  Do  you  believe  that  evil  can  be  per- 
manently kept  in  check  by  competition  with 
evil,  and  that  conference  of  prudence  can  keep 
the  devil  chained  in  its  makeshift  cage  of  mutual 
agreement  ? 


58  NATIONALISM 

This  European  war  of  Nations  is  the  war  of 
retribution.  Man,  the  person,  must  protest  for 
his  very  life  against  the  heaping  up  of  things 
where  there  should  be  the  heart,  and  systems 
and  policies  where  there  should  flow  living  human 
relationship.  The  time  has  come  when,  for  the 
sake  of  the  whole  outraged  world,  Europe  should 
fully  know  in  her  own  person  the  terrible  ab- 
surdity of  the  thing  called  the  Nation. 

The  Nation  has  thriven  long  upon  mutilated 
humanity.  Men,  the  fairest  creations  of  God, 
came  out  of  the  National  manufactory  in  huge 
numbers  as  war-making  and  money-making  pup- 
pets, ludicrously  vain  of  their  pitiful  perfection 
of  mechanism.  Human  society  grew  more  and 
more  into  a  marionette  show  of  politicians,  soldiers, 
manufacturers  and  bureaucrats,  pulled  by  wire 
arrangements  of  wonderful  efficiency. 

But  the  apotheosis  of  selfishness  can  never  make 
its  interminable  breed  of  hatred  and  greed,  fear 
and  hypocrisy,  suspicion  and  tyranny,  an  end 
in  themselves.  These  monsters  grow  into  huge 
shapes  but  never  into  harmony.  And  this  Na- 
tion may  grow  on  to  an  unimaginable  corpulence, 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST         59 

not  of  a  living  body,  but  of  steel  and  steam  and 
office  buildings,  till  its  deformity  can  contain  no 
longer  its  ugly  voluminousness,  —  till  it  begins 
to  crack  and  gape,  breathe  gas  and  fire  in  gasps, 
and  its  death-rattles  sound  in  cannon  roars.  In 
this  war,  the  death-throes  of  the  Nation  have 
commenced.  Suddenly,  all  its  mechanism  going 
mad,  it  has  begun  the  dance  of  the  furies,  shatter- 
ing its  own  limbs,  scattering  them  into  the  dust. 
It  is  the  fifth  act  of  the  tragedy  of  the  unreal. 

Those  who  have  any  faith  in  Man  cannot  but 
fervently  hope  that  the  tyranny  of  the  Nation 
will  not  be  restored  to  all  its  former  teeth  and 
claws,  to  its  far-reaching  iron  arms  and  its  im- 
mense inner  cavity,  all  stomach  and  no  heart; 
that  man  will  have  his  new  birth,  in  the  freedom 
of  his  individuality,  from  the  enveloping  vague- 
ness of  abstraction. 

The  veil  has  been  raised,  and  in  this  frightful 
war  the  West  has  stood  face  to  face  with  her  own 
creation,  to  which  she  had  offered  her  soul.  She 
must  know  what  it  truly  is. 

She  had  never  let  herself  suspect  what  slow 
decay  and  decomposition  were  secretly  going  on 


60  NATIONALISM 

in  her  moral  nature,  which  often  broke  out  in 
doctrines  of  scepticism,  but  still  oftener  and  in 
still  more  dangerously  subtle  manner  showed 
itself  in  her  unconsciousness  of  the  mutilation 
and  insult  that  she  had  been  inflicting  upon  a  vast 
part  of  the  world.  Now  she  must  know  the 
truth  nearer  home. 

And  then  there  will  come  from  her  own  children 
those  who  will  break  themselves  free  from  the 
slavery  of  this  illusion,  this  perversion  of  brother- 
hood founded  upon  self-seeking,  those  who  will 
own  themselves  as  God's  children  and  as  no  bond- 
slaves of  machinery,  which  turns  souls  into  com- 
modities and  life  into  compartments,  which,  with 
its  iron  claws,  scratches  out  the  heart  of  the 
world  and  knows  not  what  it  has  done. 

And  we  of  no  nations  of  the  world,  whose  heads 
have  been  bowed  to  the  dust,  will  know  that  this 
dust  is  more  sacred  than  the  bricks  which  build 
the  pride  of  power.  For  this  dust  is  fertile  of 
life,  and  of  beauty  and  worship.  We  shall  thank 
God  that  we  were  made  to  wait  in  silence  through 
the  night  of  despair,  had  to  bear  the  insult  of  the 
proud  and  the  strong  man's  burden,  yet  all  through 


NATIONALISM    IN    THE    WEST        6l 

it,  though  our  hearts  quaked  with  doubt  and  fear, 
never  could  we  blindly  believe  in  the  salvation 
which  machinery  offered  to  man,  but  we  held 
fast  to  our  trust  in  God  and  the  truth  of  the 
human  soul.  And  we  can  still  cherish  the  hope, 
that,  when  power  becomes  ashamed  to  occupy 
its  throne  and  is  ready  to  make  way  for  love, 
when  the  morning  comes  for  cleansing  the  blood- 
stained steps  of  the  Nation  along  the  highroad 
of  humanity,  we  shall  be  called  upon  to  bring 
our  own  vessel  of  sacred  water  —  the  water  of 
worship  —  to  sweeten  the  history  of  man  into 
purity,  and  with  its  sprinkling  make  the  trampled 
dust  of  the  centuries  blessed  with  fruitfulness. 


NATIONALISM  IN  JAPAN 


NATIONALISM  IN  JAPAN 

I 

THE  worst  form  of  bondage  is  the  bondage  of 
dejection  which  keeps  men  hopelessly  chained  in 
loss  of  faith  in  themselves.  We  have  been  re- 
peatedly told,  with  some  justification,  that  Asia 
lives  in  the  past,  —  it  is  like  a  rich  mausoleum 
which  displays  all  its  magnificence  in  trying  to 
immortalize  the  dead.  It  was  said  of  Asia  that 
it  could  never  move  in  the  path  of  progress,  its 
face  was  so  inevitably  turned  backwards.  We 
accepted  this  accusation,  and  came  to  believe  it. 
In  India,  I  know,  a  large  section  of  our  educated 
community,  grown  tired  of  feeling  the  humilia- 
tion of  this  charge  against  us,  is  trying  all  its  re- 
sources of  self-deception  to  turn  it  into  a  matter 
of  boasting.  But  boasting  is  only  a  masked 
shame,  it  does  not  truly  believe  in  itself. 

When  things  stood  still  like  this,  and  we  in 
Asia  hypnotized  ourselves  into  the  belief  that  it 
could  never  by  any  possibility  be  otherwise,  Japan 

65 


66  NATIONALISM 

rose  from  her  dreams,  and  in  giant  strides  left 
centuries  of  inaction  behind,  overtaking  the  present 
time  in  its  foremost  achievement.  This  has 
broken  the  spell  under  which  we  lay  in  torpor  for 
ages,  taking  it  to  be  the  normal  condition  of 
certain  races  living  in  certain  geographical  limits. 
We  forgot  that  in  Asia  great  kingdoms  were 
founded,  philosophy,  science,  arts  and  literatures 
flourished,  and  all  the  great  religions  of  the  world 
had  their  cradles.  Therefore  it  cannot  be  said, 
that  there  is  anything  inherent  in  the  soil  and 
climate  of  Asia  that  produces  mental  inactivity 
and  atrophies  the  faculties  which  impel  men  to  go 
forward.  For  centuries  we  did  hold  torches  of 
civilization  in  the  East  when  the  West  slumbered 
in  darkness,  and  that  could  never  be  the  sign  of 
sluggish  mind  or  narrowness  of  vision. 

Then  fell  the  darkness  of  night  upon  all  the 
lands  of  the  East.  The  current  of  time  seemed 
to  stop  at  once,  and  Asia  ceased  to  take  any  new 
food,  feeding  upon  its  own  past,  which  is  really 
feeding  upon  itself.  The  stillness  seemed  like 
death,  and  the  great  voice  was  silenced  which 
sent  forth  messages  of  eternal  truth  that  have 


NATIONALISM    IN    JAPAN  67 

saved  man's  life  from  pollution  for  generations, 
like  the  ocean  of  air  that  keeps  the  earth  sweet, 
ever  cleansing  its  impurities. 

But  life  has  its  sleep,  its  periods  of  inactivity, 
when  it  loses  its  movements,  takes  no  new  food, 
living  upon  its  past  storage.  Then  it  grows  help- 
less, its  muscles  relaxed,  and  it  easily  lends  itself 
to  be  jeered  at  for  its  stupor.  In  the  rhythm  of 
life,  pauses  there  must  be  for  the  renewal  of  life. 
Life  in  its  activity  is  ever  spending  itself,  burning 
all  its  fuel.  This  extravagance  cannot  go  on  in- 
definitely, but  is  always  followed  by  a  passive 
stage,  when  all  expenditure  is  stopped  and  all 
adventures  abandoned  in  favour  of  rest  and  slow 
recuperation. 

The  tendency  of  mind  is  economical,  it  loves 
to  form  habits  and  move  in  grooves  which  save  it 
the  trouble  of  thinking  anew  at  each  of  its  steps. 
Ideals  once  formed  make  the  mind  lazy. 
It  becomes  afraid  to  risk  its  acquisitions  in  fresh 
endeavors.  It  tries  completely  to  enjoy  security 
by  shutting  up  its  belongings  behind  fortifications 
of  habits.  But  this  is  really  shutting  oneself  up 
from  the  fullest  enjoyment  of  one's  own  posses- 


68  NATIONALISM 

sions.  It  is  miserliness.  The  living  ideals  must 
not  lose  their  touch  with  the  growing  and  chang- 
ing life.  Their  real  freedom  is  not  within  the 
boundaries  of  security,  but  in  the  highroad  of  ad- 
ventures full  of  the  risk  of  new  experiences. 

One  morning  the  whole  world  looked  up  in  sur- 
prise, when  Japan  broke  through  her  walls  of  old 
habits  in  a  night  and  came  out  triumphant.  It 
was  done  in  such  an  incredibly  short  time,  that 
it  seemed  like  a  change  of  dress  and  not  like  the 
building  up  of  a  new  structure.  She  showed 
the  confident  strength  of  maturity  and  the  fresh- 
ness and  infinite  potentiality  of  new  life  at  the 
same  moment.  The  fear  was  entertained  that  it 
was  a  mere  freak  of  history,  a  child's  game  of 
Time,  the  blowing  up  of  a  soap  bubble,  perfect  in 
its  rondure  and  colouring,  hollow  in  its  heart  and 
without  substance.  But  Japan  has  proved  con- 
clusively that  this  sudden  revealment  of  her  power 
is  not  a  short-lived  wonder,  a  chance  product 
of  time  and  tide,  thrown  up  from  the  depth  of 
obscurity  to  be  swept  away  the  next  moment  into 
the  sea  of  oblivion. 

The  truth  is  that  Japan  is  old  and  new  at  the 


NATIONALISM    IN    JAPAN  69 

same  time.  She  has  her  legacy  of  ancient  culture 
from  the  East,  —  the  culture  that  enjoins  man  to 
look  for  his  true  wealth  and  power  in  his  inner 
soul,  the  culture  that  gives  self-possession  in  the 
face  of  loss  and  danger,  self-sacrifice  without  count- 
ing the  cost  or  hoping  for  gain,  defiance  of  death, 
acceptance  of  countless  social  obligations  that  we 
owe  to  men  as  social  beings.  In  a  word  modern 
Japan  has  come  out  of  the  immemorial  East  like 
a  lotus  blossoming  in  easy  grace,  all  the  while 
keeping  its  firm  hold  upon  the  profound  depth 
from  which  it  has  sprung. 

And  Japan,  the  child  of  the  Ancient  East,  has 
also  fearlessly  claimed  all  the  gifts  of  the  modern 
age  for  herself.  She  has  shown  her  bold  spirit  in 
breaking  through  the  confinements  of  habits,  use- 
less accumulations  of  the  lazy  mind,  seeking  safety 
in  its  thrift  and  its  locks  and  keys.  Thus  she  has 
come  in  contact  with  the  living  time  and  has 
accepted  with  eagerness  and  aptitude  the  respon- 
sibilities of  modern  civilization. 

This  it  is  which  has  given  heart  to  the  rest  of 
Asia.  We  have  seen  that  the  life  and  the  strength 
are  there  in  us,  only  the  dead  crust  has  to  be 


70  NATIONALISM 

removed.  We  have  seen  that  taking  shelter  in  the 
dead  is  death  itself,  and  only  taking  all  the  risk 
of  life  to  the  fullest  extent  is  living. 

I,  for  myself,  cannot  believe  that  Japan  has 
become  what  she  is  by  imitating  the  West.  We 
cannot  imitate  life,  we  cannot  simulate  strength 
for  long,  nay,  what  is  more,  a  mere  imitation  is 
a  source  of  weakness.  For  it  hampers-  our  true 
nature,  it  is  always  in  our  way.  It  is  like  dress- 
ing our  skeleton  with  another  man's  skin,  giving 
rise  to  eternal  feuds  between  the  skin  and  the 
bones  at  every  movement. 

The  real  truth  is  that  science  is  not  man's 
nature,  it  is  mere  knowledge  and  training.  By 
knowing  the  laws  of  the  material  universe  you 
do  not  change  your  deeper  humanity.  You  can 
borrow  knowledge  from  others,  but  you  cannot 
borrow  temperament. 

But  at  the  imitative  stage  of  our  schooling  we 
cannot  distinguish  between  the  essential  and  the 
non-essential,  between  what  is  transferable  and 
what  is  not.  It  is  something  like  the  faith  of  the 
primitive  mind  in  the  magical  properties  of  the 
accidents  of  outward  forms  which  accompany 


NATIONALISM    IN    JAPAN  71 

some  real  truth.  We  are  afraid  of  leaving  out 
something  valuable  and  efficacious  by  not  swallow- 
ing the  husk  with  the  kernel.  But  while  our 
greed  delights  in  wholesale  appropriation,  it  is 
the  function  of  our  vital  nature  to  assimilate, 
which  is  the  only  true  appropriation  for  a  living 
organism.  Where  there  is  life  it  is  sure  to  assert 
itself  by  its  choice  of  acceptance  and  refusal  accord- 
ing to  its  constitutional  necessity.  The  living 
organism  does  not  allow  itself  to  grow  into  its 
food,  it  changes  its  food  into  its  own  body.  And 
only  thus  can  it  grow  strong  and  not  by  mere 
accumulation,  or  by  giving  up  its  personal 
identity. 

Japan  has  imported  her  food  from  the  West, 
but  not  her  vital  nature.  Japan  cannot  altogether 
lose  and  merge  herself  in  the  scientific  parapher- 
nalia she  has  acquired  from  the  West  and  be 
turned  into  a  mere  borrowed  machine.  She  has 
her  own  soul  which  must  assert  itself  over  all  her 
requirements.  That  she  is  capable  of  doing  so, 
and  that  the  process  of  assimilation  is  going  on, 
have  been  amply  proved  by  the  signs  of  vigorous 
health  that  she  exhibits.  And  I  earnestly  hope 


72  NATIONALISM 

that  Japan  may  never  lose  her  faith  in  her  own 
soul  in  the  mere  pride  of  her  foreign  acquisition. 
For  that  pride  itself  is  a  humiliation,  ultimately 
leading  to  poverty  and  weakness.  It  is  the  pride 
of  the  fop  who  sets  more  store  on  his  new  head- 
dress than  on  his  head  itself. 

The  whole  world  waits  to  see  what  this  great 
Eastern  nation  is  going  to  do  with  the  opportuni- 
ties and  responsibilities  she  has  accepted  from 
the  hands  of  the  modern  time.  If  it  be  a  mere 
reproduction  of  the  West,  then  the  great  expec- 
tation she  has  raised  will  remain  unfulfilled.  For 
there  are  grave  questions  that  the  Western  civ- 
ilization has  presented  before  the  world  but 
not  completely  answered.  The  conflict  between 
the  individual  and  the  state,  labour  and  capital, 
the  man  and  the  woman ;  the  conflict  between  the 
greed  of  material  gain  and  the  spiritual  life  of 
man,  the  organized  selfishness  of  nations  and  the 
higher  ideals  of  humanity;  the  conflict  between 
all  the  ugly  complexities  inseparable  from  giant 
organizations  of  commerce  and  state  and  the 
natural  instincts  of  man  crying  for  simplicity  and 
beauty  and  fulness  of  leisure,  —  all  these  have  to 


NATIONALISM    IN    JAPAN  73 

be  brought  to  a  harmony  in  a  manner  not  yet 
dreamt  of. 

We  have  seen  this  great  stream  of  civilization 
choking  itself  from  debris  carried  by  its  innumer- 
able channels.  We  have  seen  that  with  all  its 
vaunted  love  of  humanity  it  has  proved  itself  the 
greatest  menace  to  Man,  far  worse  than  the 
sudden  outbursts  of  nomadic  barbarism  from 
which  men  suffered  in  the  early  ages  of  history. 
We  have  seen  that,  in  spite  of  its  boasted  love  of 
freedom,  it  has  produced  worse  forms  of  slavery 
than  ever  were  current  in  earlier  societies,  — 
slavery  whose  chains  are  unbreakable,  either  be- 
cause they  are  unseen,  or  because  they  assume 
the  names  and  appearance  of  freedom.  We  have 
seen,  under  the  spell  of  its  gigantic  sordidness,  man 
losing  faith  in  all  the  heroic  ideals  of  life  which 
have  made  him  great. 

Therefore  you  cannot  with  a  light  heart  accept 
the  modern  civilization  with  all  its  tendencies, 
methods  and  structures,  and  dream  that  they  are 
inevitable.  You  must  apply  your  Eastern  mind, 
your  spiritual  strength,  your  love  of  simplicity, 
your  recognition  of  social  obligation,  in  order  to 


74  NATIONALISM 

cut  out  a  new  path  for  this  great  unwieldy  car  of 
progress,  shrieking  out  its  loud  discords  as  it  runs. 
You  must  minimize  the  immense  sacrifice  of  man's 
life  and  freedom  that  it  claims  in  its  every  move- 
ment. For  generations  you  have  felt  and  thought 
and  worked,  have  enjoyed  and  worshipped  in  your 
own  special  manner;  and  this  cannot  be  cast  off 
like  old  clothes.  It  is  in  your  blood,  in  the  mar- 
row of  your  bones,  in  the  texture  of  your  flesh,  in 
the  tissue  of  your  hrains ;  and  it  must  modify 
everything  you  lay  your  hands  upon,  without 
your  knowing,  even  against  your  wishes.  Once 
you  did  solve  the  problems  of  man  to  your  own 
satisfaction,  you  had  your  philosophy  of  life  and 
evolved  your  own  art  of  living.  All  this  you  must 
apply  to  the  present  situation  and  out  of  it  will 
arise  a  new  creation  and  not  a  mere  repetition,  a 
creation  which  the  soul  of  your  people  will  own 
for  itself  and  proudly  offer  to  the  world  as  its 
tribute  to  the  welfare  of  man.  Of  all  countries 
in  Asia,  here  in  Japan  you  have  the  freedom 
to  use  the  materials  you  have  gathered  from  the 
West  according  to  your  genius  and  your  need. 
Therefore  your  responsibility  is  all  the  greater,  for 


NATIONALISM    IN    JAPAN  75 

in  your  voice  Asia  shall  answer  the  questions  that 
Europe  has  submitted  to  the  conference  of  Man. 
In  your  land  the  experiments  will  be  carried  on 
by  which  the  East  will  change  the  aspects  of  the 
modern  civilization,  infusing  life  in  it  where  it  is 
a  machine,  substituting  human  heart  for  cold  ex- 
pediency, not  caring  so  much  for  power  and 
success  as  for  harmonious  and  living  growth,  for 
truth  and  beauty. 

I  cannot  but  bring  to  your  mind  those  days 
when  the  whole  of  Eastern  Asia  from  Burma  to 
Japan  was  united  with  India  in  the  closest  tie  of 
friendship,  the  only  natural  tie  which  can  exist 
between  nations.  There  was  a  living  communi- 
cation of  hearts,  a  nervous  system  evolved  through 
which  messages  ran  between  us  about  the  deepest 
needs  of  humanity.  We  did  not  stand  in  fear  of 
each  other,  we  had  not  to  arm  ourselves  to  keep 
each  other  in  check ;  our  relation  was  not  that  of 
self-interest,  of  exploration  and  spoliation  of  each 
other's  pockets  ;  ideas  and  ideals  were  exchanged, 
gifts  of  the  highest  love  were  offered  and  taken ; 
no  difference  of  languages  and  customs  hindered 
us  in  approaching  each  other  heart  to  heart; 


76  NATIONALISM 

no  pride  of  race  or  insolent  consciousness  of  su- 
periority, physical  or  mental,  marred  our  relation ; 
our  arts  and  literatures  put  forth  new  leaves  and 
flowers  under  the  influence  of  this  sunlight  of 
united  hearts ;  and  races  belonging  to  different 
lands  and  languages  and  histories  acknowledged 
the  highest  unity  of  man  and  the  deepest  bond  of 
love.  May  we  not  also  remember  that. in  those 
days  of  peace  and  goodwill,  of  men  uniting  for 
those  supreme  ends  of  life,  your  nature  laid  by 
for  itself  the  balm  of  immortality  which  has  helped 
your  people  to  be  born  again  in  a  new  age,  to  be 
able  to  survive  its  old  outworn  structures  and 
take  on  a  new  young  body,  to  come  out  unscathed 
from  the  shock  of  the  most  wonderful  revolution 
that  the  world  has  ever  seen  ? 

The  political  civilization  which  has  sprung 
up  from  the  soil  of  Europe  and  is  overrunning 
the  whole  world,  like  some  prolific  weed,  is  based 
upon  exclusiveness.  It  is  always  watchful  to 
keep  at  bay  the  aliens  or  to  exterminate  them. 
It  is  carnivorous  and  cannibalistic  in  its  tenden- 
cies, it  feeds  upon  the  resources  of  other  peoples 
and  tries  to  swallow  their  whole  future.  It  is 


NATIONALISM    IN    JAPAN  77 

always  afraid  of  other  races  achieving  eminence, 
naming  it  as  a  peril,  and  tries  to  thwart  all  symp- 
toms of  greatness  outside  its  own  boundaries, 
forcing  down  races  of  men  who  are  weaker,  to 
be  eternally  fixed  in  their  weakness.  Before 
this  political  civilization  came  to  its  power  and 
opened  its  hungry  jaws  wide  enough  to  gulp 
down  great  continents  of  the  earth,  we  had  wars, 
pillages,  changes  of  monarchy  and  consequent 
miseries,  but  never  such  a  sight  of  fearful  and 
hopeless  voracity,  such  wholesale  feeding  of 
nation  upon  nation,  such  huge  machines  for  turn- 
ing great  portions  of  the  earth  into  mincemeat, 
never  such  terrible  jealousies  with  all  their  ugly 
teeth  and  claws  ready  for  tearing  open  each 
other's  vitals.  This  political  civilization  is  scien- 
tific, not  human.  It  is  powerful  because  it  con- 
centrates all  its  forces  upon  one  purpose,  like  a 
millionaire  acquiring  money  at  the  cost  of  his 
soul.  It  betrays  its  trust,  it  weaves  its  meshes 
of  lies  without  shame,  it  enshrines  gigantic  idols 
of  greed  in  its  temples,  taking  great  pride  in  the 
costly  ceremonials  of  its  worship,  calling  this 
patriotism.  And  it  can  be  safely  prophesied  that 


78  NATIONALISM 

this  cannot  go  on,  for  there  is  a  moral  law  in  this 
world  which  has  its  application  both  to  individuals 
and  to  organized  bodies  of  men.  You  cannot  go 
on  violating  these  laws  in  the  name  of  your  na- 
tion, yet  enjoy  their  advantage  as  individuals. 
This  public  sapping  of  the  ethical  ideals  slowly 
reacts  upon  each  member  of  society,  gradually 
breeding  weakness,  where  it  is  not  seen,  and 
causing  that  cynical  distrust  of  all  things  sacred 
in  human  nature,  which  is  the  true  symptom  of 
senility.  You  must  keep  in  mind  that  this 
political  civilization,  this  creed  of  national  pa- 
triotism, has  not  been  given  a  long  trial.  The 
lamp  of  ancient  Greece  is  extinct  in  the  land  where 
it  was  first  lighted,  the  power  of  Rome  lies  dead 
and  buried  under  the  ruins  of  its  vast  empire. 
But  the  civilization,  whose  basis  is  society  and 
the  spiritual  ideal  of  man,  is  still  a  living  thing 
in  China  and  in  India.  Though  it  may  look 
feeble  and  small,  judged  by  the  standard  of  the 
mechanical  power  of  modern  days,  yet  like  small 
seeds  it  still  contains  life  and  will  sprout  and 
grow,  and  spread  its  beneficent  branches,  pro- 
ducing flowers  and  fruits  when  its  time  comes,  and 


NATIONALISM    IN    JAPAN  79 

showers  of  grace  descend  upon  it  from  heaven. 
But  ruins  of  sky-scrapers  of  power  and  broken 
machinery  of  greed,  even  God's  rain  is  powerless 
to  raise  up  again ;  for  they  were  not  of  life,  but 
went  against  life  as  a  whole,  —  they  are  relics  of 
the  rebellion  that  shattered  itself  to  pieces  against 
the  eternal. 

But  the  charge  is  brought  against  us  that 
the  ideals  we  cherish  in  the  East  are  static,  that 
they  have  not  the  impetus  in  them  to  move,  to 
open  out  new  vistas  of  knowledge  and  power, 
that  the  systems  of  philosophy  which  are  the 
mainstays  of  the  time-worn  civilizations  of  the 
East  despise  all  outward  proofs,  remaining  stolidly 
satisfied  in  their  subjective  certainty.  This  proves 
that  when  our  knowledge  is  vague,  we  are  apt 
to  accuse  of  vagueness  our  object  of  knowledge 
itself.  To  a  Western  observer  our  civilization 
appears  as  all  metaphysics,  as  to  a  deaf  man  piano 
playing  appears  to  be  mere  movements  of  fingers 
and  no  music.  He  cannot  think  that  we  have 
found  some  deep  basis  of  reality  upon  which  we 
have  built  our  institutions. 

Unfortunately  all  proofs  of  reality  are  in  reali- 


8o  NATIONALISM 

zation.  The  reality  of  the  scene  before  you 
depends  only  upon  the  fact  that  you  can  see, 
and  it  is  difficult  for  us  to  prove  to  an  unbeliever 
that  our  civilization  is  not  a  nebulous  system  of 
abstract  speculations,  that  it  has  achieved  some- 
thing which  is  a  positive  truth,  —  a  truth  that  can 
give  man's  heart  its  shelter  and  sustenance.  It 
has  evolved  an  inner  sense,  —  a  sense  of  vision, 
the  vision  of  the  infinite  reality  in  all  finite  things. 

But  he  says,  "You  do  not  make  any  prog- 
ress, there  is  no  movement  in  you."  I  ask 
him,  "How  do  you  know  it?  You  have  to 
judge  progress  according  to  its  aim.  A  railway 
train  makes  its  progress  towards  the  terminus  sta- 
tion, —  it  is  movement.  But  a  full-grown  tree 
has  no  definite  movement  of  that  kind,  its  prog- 
ress is  the  inward  progress  of  life.  It  lives,  with 
its  aspiration  towards  light  tingling  in  its  leaves 
and  creeping  in  its  silent  sap." 

We  also  have  lived  for  centuries,  we  still  live, 
and  we  have  our  aspiration  for  a  reality  that  has 
no  end  to  its  realization,  —  a  reality  that  goes 
beyond  death,  giving  it  a  meaning,  that  rises 
above  all  evils  of  life,  bringing  its  peace  and  purity, 


NATIONALISM    IN    JAPAN  81 

its  cheerful  renunciation  of  self.  The  product  of 
this  inner  life  is  a  living  product.  It  will  be 
needed  when  the  youth  returns  home  weary  and 
dust-laden,  when  the  soldier  is  wounded,  when  the 
wealth  is  squandered  away  and  pride  is  humbled, 
when  man's  heart  cries  for  truth  in  the  immensity 
of  facts  and  harmony  in  the  contradiction  of  ten- 
dencies. Its  value  is  not  in  its  multiplication  of 
materials,  but  in  its  spiritual  fulfilment. 

There  are  things  that  cannot  wait.  You  have 
to  rush  and  run  and  march,  if  you  must  fight  or 
take  the  best  place  in  the  market.  You  strain 
your  nerves  and  are  on  the  alert,  when  you  chase 
opportunities  that  are  always  on  their  wings.  But 
there  are  ideals  which  do  not  play  hide  and  seek 
with  our  life;  they  slowly  grow  from  seed 
to  flower,  from  flower  to  fruit;  they  require  in- 
finite space  and  heaven's  light  to  mature  and 
the  fruits  that  they  produce  can  survive  years 
of  insult  and  neglect.  The  East  with  her  ideals, 
in  whose  bosom  are  stored  the  ages  of  sunlight 
and  silence  of  stars,  can  patiently  wait  till  the 
West,  hurrying  after  the  expedient,  loses  breath 
and  stops.  Europe,  while  busily  speeding  to  her 


82  NATIONALISM 

engagements,  disdainfully  casts  her  glance  from 
her  carriage  window  to  the  reaper  reaping  his 
harvest  in  the  field,  and  in  her  intoxication  of 
speed  cannot  but  think  him  as  slow  and  ever 
receding  backwards.  But  the  speed  comes  to 
its  end,  the  engagement  loses  its  meaning  and 
the  hungry  heart  clamours  for  food,  till  at  last 
she  comes  to  the  lowly  reaper  reaping  his  har- 
vest in  the  sun.  For  if  the  office  cannot  wait, 
or  the  buying  and  selling,  or  the  craving  for 
excitement,  love  waits  and  beauty  and  the  wisdom 
of  suffering  and  the  fruits  of  patient  devotion  and 
reverent  meekness  of  simple  faith.  And  thus  shall 
wait  the  East  till  her  time  comes. 

I  must  not  hesitate  to  acknowledge  where 
Europe  is  great,  for  great  she  is  without  doubt. 
We  cannot  help  loving  her  with  all  our  heart, 
and  paying  her  the  best  homage  of  our  admira- 
tion, —  the  Europe  who,  in  her  literature  and  art, 
is  pouring  an  inexhaustible  cascade  of  beauty  and 
truth  fertilizing  all  countries  and  all  time ;  the 
Europe  who,  with  a  mind  which  is  titanic  in  its 
untiring  power,  is  sweeping  the  height  and  the 
depth  of  the  universe,  winning  her  homage  of 


NATIONALISM  IN  JAPAN  83 

knowledge  from  the  infinitely  great  and  the 
infinitely  small,  applying  all  the  resources  of 
her  great  intellect  and  heart  in  healing  the  sick 
and  alleviating  those  miseries  of  man  which  up 
till  now  we  were  contented  to  accept  in  a  spirit 
of  hopeless  resignation ;  the  Europe  who  is  mak- 
ing the  earth  yield  more  fruit  than  seemed  pos- 
sible, coaxing  and  compelling  the  great  forces 
of  nature  into  man's  service.  Such  true  great- 
ness must  have  its  motive  power  in  spiritual 
strength.  For  only  the  spirit  of  man  can  defy 
all  limitations,  have  faith  in  its  ultimate  success, 
throw  its  search-light  beyond  the  immediate  and 
the  apparent,  gladly  suffer  martyrdom  for  ends 
which  cannot  be  achieved  in  its  lifetime  and  ac- 
cept failure  without  acknowledging  defeat.  In  the 
heart  of  Europe  runs  the  purest  stream  of  human 
love,  of  love  of  justice,  of  spirit  of  self-sacrifice 
for  higher  ideals.  The  Christian  culture  of  centu- 
ries has  sunk  deep  in  her  life's  core.  In  Europe 
we  have  seen  noble  minds  who  have  ever  stood 
up  for  the  rights  of  man  irrespective  of  colour  and 
creed  ;  who  have  braved  calumny  and  insult  from 
their  own  people  in  fighting  for  humanity's  cause 


84 


NATIONALISM 


and  raising  their  voices  against  the  mad  orgies  of 
militarism,  against  the  rage  for  brutal  retaliation 
or  rapacity  that  sometimes  takes  possession  of  a 
whole  people ;  who  are  always  ready  to  make  rep- 
aration for  wrongs  done  in  the  past  by  their  own 
nations  and  vainly  attempt  to  stem  the  tide  of 
cowardly  injustice  that  flows  unchecked  because 
the  resistance  is  weak  and  innocuous  on  the  part 
of  the  injured.  There  are  these  knight-errants  of 
modern  Europe  who  have  not  lost  their  faith  in 
the  disinterested  love  of  freedom,  in  the  ideals 
which  own  no  geographical  boundaries  or  national 
self-seeking.  These  are  there  to  prove  that  the 
fountainhead  of  the  water  of  everlasting  life  has 
not  run  dry  in  Europe,  and  from  thence  she  will 
have  her  rebirth  time  after  time.  Only  there, 
where  Europe  is  too  consciously  busy  in  building 
up  her  power,  defying  her  deeper  nature  and 
mocking  it,  she  is  heaping  up  her  iniquities  to  the 
sky  crying  for  God's  vengeance  and  spreading 
the  infection  of  ugliness,  physical  and  moral,  over 
the  face  of  the  earth  with  her  heartless  commerce 
heedlessly  outraging  man's  sense  of  the  beautiful 
and  the  good.  Europe  is  supremely  good  in  her 


NATIONALISM  IN  JAPAN  85 

beneficence  where  her  face  is  turned  to  all  human- 
ity; and  Europe  is  supremely  evil  in  her  malefic 
aspect  where  her  face  is  turned  only  upon  her 
own  interest,  using  all  her  power  of  greatness  for 
ends  which  are  against  the  infinite  and  the  eternal 
in  Man. 

Eastern  Asia  has  been  pursuing  its  own  path, 
evolving  its  own  civilization,  which  was  not 
political  but  social,  not  predatory  and  mechani- 
cally efficient,  but  spiritual  and  based  upon  all 
the  varied  and  deeper  relations  of  humanity.  The 
solutions  of  the  life  problems  of  peoples  were 
thought  out  in  seclusion  and  carried  out  behind 
the  security  of  aloofness,  where  all  the  dynastic 
changes  and  foreign  invasions  hardly  touched 
them.  But  now  we  are  overtaken  by  the  outside 
world,  our  seclusion  is  lost  forever.  Yet  this 
we  must  not  regret,  as  a  plant  should  never  re- 
gret when  the  obscurity  of  its  seed-time  is  broken. 
Now  the  time  has  come  when  we  must  make 
the  world  problem  our  own  problem ;  we  must 
bring  the  spirit  of  our  civilization  into  harmony 
with  the  history  of  all  nations  of  the  earth;  we 
must  not,  in  foolish  pride,  still  keep  ourselves 


86 


NATIONALISM 


fast  within  the  shell  of  the  seed  and  the  crust 
of  the  earth  which  protected  and  nourished  our 
ideals;  for  these,  the  shell  and  the  crust,  were 
meant  to  be  broken,  so  that  life  may  spring  up  in 
all  its  vigour  and  beauty,  bringing  its  offerings  to 
the  world  in  open  light. 

In  this  task  of  breaking  the  barrier  and  fac- 
ing the  world  Japan  has  come  out  the -first  in  the 
East.  She  has  infused  hope  in  the  heart  of  all 
Asia.  This  hope  provides  the  hidden  fire  which 
is  needed  for  all  works  of  creation.  Asia  now 
feels  that  she  must  prove  her  life  by  producing 
living  work,  she  must  not  lie  passively  dormant, 
or  feebly  imitate  the  West,  in  the  infatuation  of 
fear  or  flattery.  For  this  we  offer  our  thanks  to 
this  land  of  the  rising  sun  and  solemnly  ask  her 
to  remember  that  she  has  the  mission  of  the 
East  to  fulfil.  She  must  infuse  the  sap  of  a 
fuller  humanity  into  the  heart  of  the  modern 
civilization.  She  must  never  allow  it  to  get 
choked  with  the  noxious  undergrowth,  but  lead 
it  up  towards  light  and  freedom,  towards  the 
pure  air  and  broad  space,  where  it  can  receive, 
in  the  dawn  of  its  day  and  the  darkness  of  its 


NATIONALISM    IN    JAPAN  87 

night,  heaven's  inspiration.  Let  the  greatness  of 
her  ideals  become  visible  to  all  men  like  her 
snow-crowned  Fuji  rising  from  the  heart  of  the 
country  into  the  region  of  the  infinite,  supremely 
distinct  from  its  surroundings,  beautiful  like  a 
maiden  in  its  magnificent  sweep  of  curve,  yet 
firm  and  strong  and  serenely  majestic. 

II 

I  have  travelled  in  many  countries  and  have 
met  with  men  of  all  classes,  but  never  in  my 
travels  did  I  feel  the  presence  of  the  human  so 
distinctly  as  in  this  land.  In  other  great  coun- 
tries, signs  of  man's  power  loomed  large,  and  I 
saw  vast  organizations  which  showed  efficiency 
in  all  their  features.  There,  display  and  ex- 
travagance, in  dress,  in  furniture,  in  costly  enter- 
tainments, are  startling.  They  seem  to  push  you 
back  into  a  corner,  like  a  poor  intruder  at  a 
feast;  they  are  apt  to  make  you  envious,  or  take 
your  breath  away  with  amazement.  There,  you 
do  not  feel  man  as  supreme ;  you  are  hurled 
against  a  stupendousness  of  things  that  alienates. 
But  in  Japan,  it  is  not  the  display  of  power,  or 


88  NATIONALISM 

wealth,  that  is  the  predominating  element.  You 
see  everywhere  emblems  of  love  and  admiration, 
and  not  mostly  of  ambition  and  greed.  You  see 
a  people,  whose  heart  has  come  out  and  scattered 
itself  in  profusion  in  its  commonest  utensils  of 
everyday  life,  in  its  social  institutions,  in  its 
manners,  which  are  carefully  perfect,  and  in  its 
dealings  with  things  which  are  not  only  deft,  but 
graceful  in  every  movement. 

What  has  impressed  me  most  in  this  country 
is  the  conviction  that  you  have  realized  nature's 
secrets,  not  by  methods  of  analytical  knowledge, 
but  by  sympathy.  You  have  known  her  language 
of  lines,  and  music  of  colours,  the  symmetry  in 
her  irregularities,  and  the  cadence  in  her  freedom 
of  movements ;  you  have  seen  how  she  leads  her 
immense  crowds  of  things  yet  avoids  all  frictions ; 
how  the  very  conflicts  in  her  creations  break  out 
in  dance  and  music ;  how  her  exuberance  has  the 
aspect  of  the  fulness  of  self-abandonment,  and  not 
a  mere  dissipation  of  display.  You  have  dis- 
covered that  nature  reserves  her  power  in  forms 
of  beauty;  and  it  is  this  beauty  which,  like  a 
mother,  nourishes  all  the  giant  forces  at  her  breast, 


NATIONALISM    IN    JAPAN  89 

keeping  them  in  active  vigour,  yet  in  repose. 
You  have  known  that  energies  of  nature  save 
themselves  from  wearing  out  by  the  rhythm  of 
a  perfect  grace,  and  that  she  with  the  tenderness 
of  her  curved  lines  takes  away  fatigue  from  the 
world's  muscles.  I  have  felt  that  you  have  been 
able  to  assimilate  these  secrets  into  your  life,  and 
the  truth  which  lies  in  the  beauty  of  all  things 
has  passed  into  your  souls.  A  mere  knowledge 
of  things  can  be  had  in  a  short  enough  time, 
but  their  spirit  can  only  be  acquired  by  centuries 
of  training  and  self-control.  Dominating  nature 
from  outside  is  a  much  simpler  thing  than  making 
her  your  own  in  love's  delight,  which  is  a  work 
of  true  genius.  Your  race  has  shown  that  genius, 
not  by  acquirements,  but  by  creations;  not  by 
display  of  things,  but  by  manifestation  of  its  own 
inner  being.  This  creative  power  there  is  in  all 
nations,  and  it  is  ever  active  in  getting  hold  of 
men's  natures  and  giving  them  a  form  according 
to  its  ideals.  But  here,  in  Japan,  it  seems  to 
have  achieved  its  success,  and  deeply  sunk  into 
the  minds  of  all  men,  and  permeated  their  muscles 
and  nerves.  Your  instincts  have  become  true, 


9o 


NATIONALISM 


your  senses  keen,  and  your  hands  have  acquired 
natural  skill.  The  genius  of  Europe  has  given 
her  people  the  power  of  organization,  which  has 
specially  made  itself  manifest  in  politics  and  com- 
merce and  in  coordinating  scientific  knowledge. 
The  genius  of  Japan  has  given  you  the  vision  of 
beauty  in  nature  and  the  power  of  realizing  it  in 
your  life. 

All  particular  civilization  is  the  interpretation 
of  particular  human  experience.  Europe  seems 
to  have  felt  emphatically  the  conflict  of  things  in 
the  universe,  which  can  only  be  brought  under 
control  by  conquest.  Therefore  she  is  ever  ready 
for  fight,  and  the  best  portion  of  her  attention  is 
occupied  in  organizing  forces.  But  Japan  has 
felt,  in  her  world,  the  touch  of  some  presence, 
which  has  evoked  in  her  soul  a  feeling  of  reverent 
adoration.  She  does  not  boast  of  her  mastery  of 
nature,  but  to  her  she  brings,  with  infinite  care 
and  joy,  her  offerings  of  love.  Her  relationship 
with  the  world  is  the  deeper  relationship  of  heart. 
This  spiritual  bond  of  love  she  has  established 
with  the  hills  of  her  country,  with  the  sea  and 
the  streams,  with  the  forests  in  all  their  flowery 


NATIONALISM    IN    JAPAN  91 

moods  and  varied  physiognomy  of  branches ;  she 
has  taken  into  her  heart  all  the  rustling  whispers 
and  sighing  of  the  woodjands  and  sobbing  of  the 
waves ;  the  sun  and  the  moon  she  has  studied  in 
all  the  modulations  of  their  lights  and  shades, 
and  she  is  glad  to  close  her  shops  to  greet  the 
seasons  in  her  orchards  and  gardens  and  corn- 
fields. This  opening  of  the  heart  to  the  soul  of 
the  world  is  not  confined  to  a  section  of  your 
privileged  classes,  it  is  not  the  forced  product  of 
exotic  culture,  but  it  belongs  to  all  your  men 
and  women  of  all  conditions.  This  experience  of 
your  soul,  in  meeting  a  personality  in  the  heart 
of  the  world,  has  been  embodied  in  your  civiliza- 
tion. It  is  a  civilization  of  human  relationship. 
Your  duty  towards  your  state  has  naturally 
assumed  the  character  of  filial  duty,  your  nation 
becoming  one  family  with  your  Emperor  as  its 
head.  Your  national  unity  has  not  been  evolved 
from  the  comradeship  of  arms  for  defensive 
and  offensive  purpose,  or  from  partnership  in 
raiding  adventures,  dividing  among  each  member 
the  danger  and  spoils  of  robbery.  It  is  not  an 
outcome  of  the  necessity  of  organization  for  some 


92  NATIONALISM 

ulterior  purpose,  but  it  is  an  extension  of  the 
family  and  the  obligations  of  the  heart  in  a  wide 
field  of  space  and  time.  The  ideal  of  "maitri" 
is  at  the  bottom  of  your  culture,  —  "maitri"  with 
men  and  "maitri"  with  Nature.  And  the  true 
expression  of  this  love  is  in  the  language  of 
beauty,  which  is  so  abundantly  universal  in  this 
land.  This  is  the  reason  why  a  stranger,  like 
myself,  instead  of  feeling  envy  or  humiliation 
before  these  manifestations  of  beauty,  these  crea- 
tions of  love,  feels  a  readiness  to  participate  in 
the  joy  and  glory  of  such  revealment  of  the 
human  heart. 

And  this  has  made  me  all  the  more  appre- 
hensive of  the  change,  which  threatens  Japanese 
civilization,  as  something  like  a  menace  to  one's 
own  person.  For  the  huge  heterogeneity  of  the 
modern  age,  whose  only  common  bond  is  useful- 
ness, is  nowhere  so  pitifully  exposed  against  the 
dignity  and  hidden  power  of  reticent  beauty,  as 
in  Japan. 

But  the  danger  lies  in  this,  that  organized 
ugliness  storms  the  mind  and  carries  the  day  by 
its  mass,  by  its  aggressive  persistence,  by  its 


NATIONALISM    IN    JAPAN  93 

power  of  mockery  directed  against  the  deeper 
sentiments  of  heart.  Its  harsh  obtrusiveness 
makes  it  forcibly  visible  to  us,  overcoming  our 
senses,  —  and  we  bring  to  its  altar  sacrifices, 
as  does  a  savage  to  the  fetich  which  appears 
powerful  because  of  its  hideousness.  Therefore 
its  rivalry  to  things  that  are  modest  and  pro- 
found and  have  the  subtle  delicacy  of  life  is  to  be 
dreaded. 

I  am  quite  sure  that  there  are  men  in  your 
country  who  are  not  in  sympathy  with  your 
inherited  ideals ;  whose  object  is  to  gain,  and  not 
to  grow.  They  are  loud  in  their  boast  that  they 
have  modernized  Japan.  While  I  agree  with 
them  so  far  as  to  say,  that  the  spirit  of  the  race 
should  harmonize  with  the  spirit  of  the  time,  I 
must  warn  them  that  modernizing  is  a  mere 
affectation  of  modernism,  just  as  affectation  of 
poesy  is  poetizing.  It  is  nothing  but  mimicry, 
only  affectation  is  louder  than  the  original,  and 
it  is  too  literal.  One  must  bear  in  mind,  that 
those  who  have  the  true  modern  spirit  need  not 
modernize,  just  as  those  who  are  truly  brave  are 
not  braggarts.  Modernism  is  not  in  the  dress  of 


94  NATIONALISM 

the  Europeans;  or  in  the  hideous  structures, 
where  their  children  are  interned  when  they  take 
their  lessons ;  or  in  the  square  houses  with  flat 
straight  wall-surfaces,  pierced  with  parallel  lines 
of  windows,  where  these  people  are  caged  in 
their  lifetime ;  certainly  modernism  is  not  in  their 
ladies'  bonnets,  carrying  on  them  loads  of  incon- 
gruities. These  are  not  modern,  but  merely 
European.  True  modernism  is  freedom  of  mind, 
not  slavery  of  taste.  It  is  independence  of 
thought  and  action,  not  tutelage  under  European 
schoolmasters.  It  is  science,  but  not  its  wrong  ap- 
plication in  life,  —  a  mere  imitation  of  our  science 
teachers  who  reduce  it  into  a  superstition  absurdly 
invoking  its  aid  for  all  impossible  purposes. 

Life  based  upon  mere  science  is  attractive  to 
some  men,  because  it  has  all  the  characteris- 
tics of  sport;  it  feigns  seriousness,  but  is  not 
profound.  When  you  go  a-hunting,  the  less  pity 
you  have  the  better;  for  your  one  object  is 
to  chase  the  game  and  kill  it,  to  feel  that  you 
are  the  greater  animal,  that  your  method  of  de- 
struction is  thorough  and  scientific.  And  the  life 
of  science  is  that  superficial  life.  It  pursues 


NATIONALISM    IN    JAPAN  95 

success  with  skill  and  thoroughness,  and  takes  no 
account  of  the  higher  nature  of  man.  But  those 
whose  minds  are  crude  enough  to  plan  their 
lives  upon  the  supposition,  that  man  is  merely 
a  hunter  and  his  paradise  the  paradise  of  sports- 
men, will  be  rudely  awakened  in  the  midst  of 
their  trophies  of  skeletons  and  skulls. 

I  do  not  for  a  moment  suggest,  that  Japan 
should  be  unmindful  of  acquiring  modern  weap- 
ons of  self-protection.  But  this  should  never  be 
allowed  to  go  beyond  her  instinct  of  self-preserva- 
tion. She  must  know  that  the  real  power  is  not 
in  the  weapons  themselves,  but  in  the  man  who 
wields  those  weapons ;  and  when  he,  in  his  eager- 
ness for  power,  multiplies  his  weapons  at  the 
cost  of  his  own  soul,  then  it  is  he  who  is  in  even 
greater  danger  than  his  enemies. 

Things  that  are  living  are  so  easily  hurt ;  there- 
fore they  require  protection.  In  nature,  life  pro- 
tects itself  within  its  coverings,  which  are  built 
with  life's  own  material.  Therefore  they  are  in 
harmony  with  life's  growth,  or  else  when  the  time 
comes  they  easily  give  way  and  are  forgotten. 
The  living  man  has  his  true  protection  in  his 


96  NATIONALISM 

spiritual  ideals,  which  have  their  vital  connection 
with  his  life  and  grow  with  his  growth.  But,  un- 
fortunately, all  his  armour  is  not  living,  —  some  of 
it  is  made  of  steel,  inert  and  mechanical.  There- 
fore, while  making  use  of  it,  man  has  to  be  careful 
to  protect  himself  from  its  tyranny.  If  he  is 
weak  enough  to  grow  smaller  to  fit  himself  to  his 
covering,  then  it  becomes  a  process  of  gradual 
suicide  by  shrinkage  of  the  soul.  And  Japan  must 
have  a  firm  faith  in  the  moral  law  of  existence  to 
be  able  to  assert  to  herself  that  the  Western 
nations  are  following  that  path  of  suicide,  where 
they  are  smothering  their  humanity  under  the 
immense  weight  of  organizations  in  order  to  keep 
themselves  in  power  and  hold  others  in  subjection. 
What  is  dangerous  for  Japan  is,  not  the  imita- 
tion of  the  outer  features  of  the  West,  but  the 
acceptance  of  the  motive  force  of  the  Western 
nationalism  as  her  own.  Her  social  ideals  are  al- 
ready showing  signs  of  defeat  at  the  hands  of  poli- 
tics. I  can  see  her  motto,  taken  from  science, 
"Survival  of  the  Fittest,"  writ  large  at  the  en- 
trance of  her  present-day  history  —  the  motto 
whose  meaning  is,  "Help  yourself,  and  never  heed 


NATIONALISM    IN    JAPAN  97 

what  it  costs  to  others";  the  motto  of  the  blind 
man  who  only  believes  in  what  he  can  touch,  be- 
cause he  cannot  see.  But  those  who  can  see,  know 
that  men  are  so  closely  knit,  that  when  you  strike 
others  the  blow  comes  back  to  yourself.  The 
moral  law,  which  is  the  greatest  discovery  of 
man,  is  the  discovery  of  this  wonderful  truth, 
that  man  becomes  all  the  truer,  the  more  he  realizes 
himself  in  others.  This  truth  has  not  only  a 
subjective  value,  but  is  manifested  in  every  de- 
partment of  our  life.  And  nations,  who  sedu- 
lously cultivate  moral  blindness  as  the  cult  of 
patriotism,  will  end  their  existence  in  a  sudden 
and  violent  death.  In  past  ages  we  had  foreign 
invasions,  but  they  never  touched  the  soul  of  the 
people  deeply.  They  were  merely  the  outcome  of 
individual  ambitions.  The  people  themselves, 
being  free  from  the  responsibilities  of  the  baser 
and  more  heinous  side  of  those  adventures,  had 
all  the  advantage  of  the  heroic  and  the  human 
disciplines  derived  from  them.  This  developed 
their  unflinching  loyalty,  their  single-minded  devo- 
tion to  the  obligations  of  honour,  their  power  of 
complete  self-surrender  and  fearless  acceptance  of 


98  NATIONALISM 

death  and  danger.  Therefore  the  ideals,  whose 
seats  were  in  the  hearts  of  the  people,  would  not 
undergo  any  serious  change  owing  to  the  policies 
adopted  by  the  kings  or  generals.  But  now, 
where  the  spirit  of  the  Western  nationalism  pre- 
vails, the  whole  people  is  being  taught  from  boy- 
hood to  foster  hatreds  and  ambitions  by  all  kinds 
of  means,  —  by  the  manufacture  of  half-truths  and 
untruths  in  history,  by  persistent  misrepresenta- 
tion of  other  races  and  the  culture  of  unfavourable 
sentiments  towards  them,  by  setting  up  memorials 
of  events,  very  often  false,  which  for  the  sake  of 
humanity  should  be  speedily  forgotten,  thus  con- 
tinually brewing  evil  menace  towards  neighbours 
and  nations  other  than  their  own.  This  is  poison- 
ing the  very  fountainhead  of  humanity.  It  is 
discrediting  the  ideals,  which  were  born  of  the 
lives  of  men,  who  were  our  greatest  and  best. 
It  is  holding  up  gigantic  selfishness  as  the  one 
universal  religion  for  all  nations  of  the  world. 
We  can  take  anything  else  from  the  hands  of 
science,  but  not  this  elixir  of  moral  death.  Never 
think  for  a  moment,  that  the  hurts  you  inflict 
upon  other  races  will  not  infect  you,  and  the  en- 


NATIONALISM    IN    JAPAN  99 

mities  you  sow  around  your  homes  will  be  a  wall 
of  protection  to  you  for  all  time  to  come.  To 
imbue  the  minds  of  a  whole  people  with  an  ab- 
normal vanity  of  its  own  superiority,  to  teach  it  to 
take  pride  in  its  moral  callousness  and  ill-begotten 
wealth,  to  perpetuate  humiliation  of  defeated  na- 
tions by  exhibiting  trophies  won  from  war,  and  us- 
ing these  in  schools  in  order  to  breed  in  children's 
minds  contempt  for  others,  is  imitating  the  West 
where  she  has  a  festering  sore,  whose  swelling  is  a 
swelling  of  disease  eating  into  its  vitality. 

Our  food  crops,  which  are  necessary  for  our 
sustenance,  are  products  of  centuries  of  selection 
and  care.  But  the  vegetation,  which  we  have 
not  to  transform  into  our  lives,  does  not  require 
the  patient  thoughts  of  generations.  It  is  not 
easy  to  get  rid  of  weeds ;  but  it  is  easy,  by  pro- 
cess of  neglect,  to  ruin  your  food  crops  and  let 
them  revert  to  their  primitive  state  of  wildness. 
Likewise  the  culture,  which  has  so  kindly  adapted 
itself  to  your  soil,  —  so  intimate  with  life,  so 
human,  —  not  only  needed  tilling  and  weeding 
in  past  ages,  but  still  needs  anxious  work  and 
watching.  What  is  merely  modern  —  as  science 


100  NATIONALISM 

and  methods  of  organization  —  can  be  trans- 
planted ;  but  what  is  vitally  human  has  fibres  so 
delicate,  and  roots  so  numerous  and  far  reaching, 
that  it  dies  when  moved  from  its  soil.  Therefore  I 
am  afraid  of  the  rude  pressure  of  the  political  ideals 
of  the  West  upon  your  own.  In  political  civiliza- 
tion, the  state  is  an  abstraction  and  relationship 
of  men  utilitarian.  Because  it  has  no  root  in  senti- 
ments, it  is  so  dangerously  easy  to  handle.  Half 
a  century  has  been  enough  for  you  to  master  this 
machine ;  and  there  are  men  among  you,  whose 
fondness  for  it  exceeds  their  love  for  the  living 
ideals,  which  were  born  with  the  birth  of  your 
nation  and  nursed  in  your  centuries.  It  is  like  a 
child  who,  in  the  excitement  of  his  play,  imagines 
he  likes  his  playthings  better  than  his  mother. 

Where  man  is  at  his  greatest,  he  is  unconscious. 
Your  civilization,  whose  mainspring  is  the  bond 
of  human  relationship,  has  been  nourished  in  the 
depth  of  a  healthy  life  beyond  reach  of  prying 
self-analysis.  But  a  mere  political  relationship  is 
all  conscious ;  it  is  an  eruptive  inflammation  of 
aggressiveness.  It  has  forcibly  burst  upon  your 
notice.  And  the  time  has  come,  when  you  have 


NATIONALISM    IN    JAPAN  IOI 

to  be  roused  into  full  consciousness  of  the  truth 
by  which  you  live,  so  that  you  may  not  be  taken 
unawares.  The  past  has  been  God's  gift  to  you ; 
about  the  present,  you  must  make  your  own 
choice. 

So  the  questions  you  have  to  put  to  yourselves 
are  these,  —  "Have  we  read  the  world -wrong, 
and  based  our  relation  to  it  upon  an  ignorance  of 
human  nature  ?  Is  the  instinct  of  the  Wefct" right, 
where  she  builds  her  national  welfare  behind  the 
barricade  of  a  universal  distrust  of  humanity?" 

You  must  have  detected  a  strong  accent  of 
fear,  whenever  the  West  has  discussed  the  possi- 
bility of  the  rise  of  an  Eastern  race.  The  reason 
of  it  is  this,  that  the  power,  by  whose  help  she 
thrives,  is  an  evil  power ;  so  long  as  it  is  held  on 
her  own  side  she  can  be  safe,  while  the  rest  of  the 
world  trembles.  The  vital  ambition  of  the  present 
civilization  of  Europe  is  to  have  the  exclusive 
possession  of  the  devil.  All  her  armaments  and 
diplomacy  are  directed  upon  this  one  object. 
But  these  costly  rituals  for  invocation  of  the  evil 
spirit  lead  through  a  path  of  prosperity  to  the 
brink  of  cataclysm.  The  furies  of  terror,  which 


102  NATIONALISM 

the  West  has  let  loose  upon  God's  world,  come 
back  to  threaten  herself  and  goad  her  into  prep- 
arations of  more  and  more  frightfulness ;  this 
gives  her  no  rest  and  makes  her  forget  all  else  but 
the  perils  that  she  causes  to  others  and  incurs 
herself.  To  the  worship  of  this  devil  of  politics 
she  sacrifices  other  countries  as  victims.  She 
feeds  upon  their  dead  flesh  and  grows  fat  upon 
it,  so  1'ong  as  the  carcasses  remain  fresh,  —  but 
they  are  sure  to  rot  at  last,  and  the  dead  will  take 
their  revenge,  by  spreading  pollution  far  and  wide 
and  poisoning  the  vitality  of  the  feeder.  Japan 
had  all  her  wealth  of  humanity,  her  harmony  of 
heroism  and  beauty,  her  depth  of  self-control  and 
richness  of  self-expression ;  yet  the  Western 
nations  felt  no  respect  for  her,  till  she  proved  that 
the  bloodhounds  of  Satan  are  not  only  bred  in 
the  kennels  of  Europe,  but  can  also  be  domes- 
ticated in  Japan  and  fed  with  man's  miseries. 
They  admit  Japan's  equality  with  themselves, 
only  when  they  know  that  Japan  also  possesses 
the  key  to  open  the  floodgate  of  hell-fire  upon  the 
fair  earth,  whenever  she  chooses,  and  can  dance, 
in  their  own  measure,  the  devil  dance  of  pillage, 


NATIONALISM    IN    JAPAN  103 

murder  and  ravishment  of  innocent  women, 
while  the  world  goes  to  ruin.  We  know  that, 
in  the  early  stage  of  man's  moral  immaturity, 
he  only  feels  reverence  for  the  god  whose  malev- 
olence he  dreads.  But  is  this  the  ideal  of  man 
which  we  can  look  up  to  with  pride  ?  After 
centuries  of  civilization  nations  fearing  each  other 
like  the  prowling  wild  beasts  of  the  night-time ; 
shutting  their  doors  of  hospitality;  combining 
only  for  purpose  of  aggression  or  defence ;  hiding 
in  their  holes  their  trade  secrets,  state  secrets, 
secrets  of  their  armaments ;  making  peace  offer- 
ings to  the  barking  dogs  of  each  other  with  the 
meat  which  does  not  belong  to  them ;  holding 
down  fallen  races  struggling  to  stand  upon  their 
feet ;  with  their  right  hands  dispensing  religion 
to  weaker  peoples,  while  robbing  them  with  their 
left,  —  is  there  anything  in  this  to  make  us 
envious  ?  Are  we  to  bend  our  knees  to  the  spirit 
of  this  nationalism,  which  is  sowing  broadcast 
over  all  the  world  seeds  of  fear,  greed,  suspicion, 
unashamed  lies  of  its  diplomacy,  and  unctuous 
lies  of  its  profession  of  peace  and  good-will  and 
universal  brotherhood  of  Man  ?  Can  we  have 


104  NATIONALISM 

no  doubt  in  our  minds,  when  we  rush  to  the 
Western  market  to  buy  this  foreign  product  in 
exchange  for  our  own  inheritance  ?  I  am  aware 
how  difficult  it  is  to  know  one's  self;  and  the 
man  who  is  intoxicated  furiously  denies  his 
drunkenness ;  yet  the  West  herself  is  anxiously 
thinking  of  her  problems  and  trying  experiments. 
But  she  is  like  a  glutton,  who  has  not. the  heart 
to  give  up  his  intemperance  in  eating,  and  fondly 
clings  to  the  hope  that  he  can  cure  his  nightmares 
of  indigestion  by  medicine.  Europe  is  not  ready 
to  give  up  her  political  inhumanity,  with  all  the 
baser  passions  of  man  attendant  upon  it;  she 
believes  only  in  modification  of  systems,  and  not 
in  change  of  heart. 

We  are  willing  to  buy  their  machine-made 
systems,  not  with  our  hearts,  but  with  our  brains. 
We  shall  try  them  and  build  sheds  for  them,  but 
not  enshrine  them  in  our  homes,  or  temples. 
There  are  races  who  worship  the  animals  they 
kill ;  we  can  buy  meat  from  them,  when  we  are 
hungry,  but  not  the  worship  which  goes  with  the 
killing.  We  must  not  vitiate  our  children's  minds 
with  the  superstition,  that  business  is  business, 


NATIONALISM    IN    JAPAN  105 

war  is  war,  politics  is  politics.  We  must  know 
that  man's  business  has  to  be  more  than  mere 
business,  and  so  have  to  be  his  war  and  politics. 
You  had  your  own  industry  in  Japan ;  how  scru- 
pulously honest  and  true  it  was,  you  can  see  by 
its  products,  —  by  their  grace  and  strength,  their 
conscientiousness  in  details,  where  they  can  hardly 
be  observed.  But  the  tidal  wave  of  falsehood  has 
swept  over  your  land  from  that  part  of  the  world, 
where  business  is  business,  and  honesty  is  followed 
in  it  merely  as  the  best  policy.  Have  you  never 
felt  shame,  when  you  see  the  trade  advertise- 
ments, not  only  plastering  the  whole  town  with 
lies  and  exaggerations,  but  invading  the  green 
fields,  where  the  peasants  do  their  honest  labour, 
and  the  hill-tops,  which  greet  the  first  pure  light 
of  the  morning  ?  It  is  so  easy  to  dull  our  sense 
of  honour  and  delicacy  of  mind  with  constant 
abrasion,  while  falsehoods  stalk  abroad  with  proud 
steps  in  the  name  of  trade,  politics  and  patriotism, 
that  any  protest  against  their  perpetual  intrusion 
into  our  lives  is  considered  to  be  sentimentalism, 
unworthy  of  true  manliness. 

And   it  has   come  to  pass    that    the    children 


io6  NATIONALISM 

of  those  heroes  who  would  keep  their  word  at 
the  point  of  death,  who  would  disdain  to  cheat 
men  for  vulgar  profit,  who  even  in  their  fight 
would  much  rather  court  defeat  than  be  dis- 
honourable, have  become  energetic  in  dealing  with 
falsehoods  and  do  not  feel  humiliated  by  gaining 
advantage  from  them.  And  this  has  been  effected 
by  the  charm  of  the  word  'modern.'  But  if  un- 
diluted utility  be  modern,  beauty  is  of  all  ages ; 
if  mean  selfishness  be  modern,  the  human  ideals 
are  no  new  inventions.  And  we  must  know  for 
certain,  that  however  modern  may  be  the  pro- 
ficiency which  cripples  man  for  the  sake  of 
methods  and  machines,  it  will  never  live  to  be 
old. 

But  while  trying  to  free  our  minds  from  the 
arrogant  claims  of  Europe  and  to  help  ourselves 
out  of  the  quicksands  of  our  infatuation,  we  may 
go  to  the  other  extreme  and  blind  ourselves  with 
a  wholesale  suspicion  of  the  West.  The  reaction 
of  disillusionment  is  just  as  unreal  as  the  first 
shock  of  illusion.  We  must  try  to  come  to  that 
normal  state  of  mind,  by  which  we  can  clearly 
discern  our  own  danger  and  avoid  it,  without 


NATIONALISM    IN    JAPAN  107 

being  unjust  towards  the  source  of  that  danger. 
There  is  always  the  natural  temptation  in  us  of 
wishing  to  pay  back  Europe  in  her  own  coin, 
and  return  contempt  for  contempt  and  evil  for 
evil.  But  that  again  would  be  to  imitate  Europe 
in  one  of  her  worst  features  which  comes  out  in 
her  behaviour  to  people  whom  she  describes  as 
yellow  or  red,  brown  or  black.  And  this  is  a 
point  on  which  we  in  the  East  have  to  acknowl- 
edge our  guilt  and  own  that  our  sin  has  been  as 
great,  if  not  greater,  when  we  insulted  humanity 
by  treating  with  utter  disdain  and  cruelty  men 
who  belonged  to  a  particular  creed,  colour  or 
caste.  It  is  really  because  we  are  afraid  of  our 
own  weakness,  which  allows  itself  to  be  overcome 
by  the  sight  of  power,  that  we  try  to  substitute 
for  it  another  weakness  which  makes  itself  blind 
to  the  glories  of  the  West.  When  we  truly 
know  the  Europe  which  is  great  and  good,  we 
can  effectively  save  ourselves  from  the  Europe 
which  is  mean  and  grasping.  It  is  easy  to  be 
unfair  in  one's  judgment  when  one  is  faced  with 
human  miseries,  —  and  pessimism  is  the  result 
of  building  theories  while  the  mind  is  suffering. 


108  NATIONALISM 

To  despair  of  humanity  is  only  possible,  if  we 
lose  faith  in  truth  which  brings  to  it  strength, 
when  its  defeat  is  greatest,  and  calls  out  new 
life  from  the  depth  of  its  destruction.  We  must 
admit  that  there  is  a  living  soul  in  the  West  which 
is  struggling  unobserved  against  the  hugeness  of 
the  organizations  under  which  men,  women  and 
children  are  being  crushed,  and  whose  mechani- 
cal necessities  are  ignoring  laws  that  are  spiritual 
and  human,  —  the  soul  whose  sensibilities  refuse 
to  be  dulled  completely  by  dangerous  habits  of 
heedlessness  in  dealings  with  races  for  whom  it 
lacks  natural  sympathy.  The  West  could  never 
have  risen  to  the  eminence  she  has  reached,  if 
her  strength  were  merely  the  strength  of  the 
brute,  or  of  the  machine.  The  divine  in  her 
heart  is  suffering  from  the  injuries  inflicted  by 
her  hands  upon  the  world,  —  and  from  this  pain 
of  her  higher  nature  flows  the  secret  balm  which 
will  bring  healing  to  those  injuries.  Time  after 
time  she  has  fought  against  herself  and  has  un- 
done the  chains,  which  with  her  own  hands  she 
had  fastened  round  helpless  limbs;  and  though 
she  forced  poison  down  the  throat  of  a  great  na- 


NATIONALISM    IN    JAPAN  109 

tion  at  the  point  of  sword  for  gain  of  money,  she 
herself  woke  up  to  withdraw  from  it,  to  wash 
her  hands  clean  again.  This  shows  hidden  springs 
of  humanity  in  spots  which  look  dead  and  barren. 
It  proves  that  the  deeper  truth  in  her  nature, 
which  can  survive  such  a  career  of  cruel  coward- 
liness, is  not  greed,  but  reverence  for  unselfish 
ideals.  It  would  be  altogether  unjust,  both  to  us 
and  to  Europe,  to  say  that  she  has  fascinated  the 
modern  Eastern  mind  by  the  mere  exhibition  of 
her  power.  Through  the  smoke  of  cannons  and 
dust  of  markets  the  light  of  her  moral  nature  has 
shone  bright,  and  she  has  brought  to  us  the  ideal 
of  ethical  freedom,  whose  foundation  lies  deeper 
than  social  conventions  and  whose  province  of 
activity  is  world-wide. 

The  East  has  instinctively  felt,  even  through 
her  aversion,  that  she  has  a  great  deal  to  learn 
from  Europe,  not  merely  about  the  materials  of 
power,  but  about  its  inner  source,  which  is  of 
mind  and  of  the  moral  nature  of  man.  Europe 
has  been  teaching  us  the  higher  obligations  of 
public  good  above  those  of  the  family  and  the 
clan,  and  the  sacredness  of  law,  which  makes 


no 


NATIONALISM 


society  independent  of  individual  caprice,  secures 
for  it  continuity  of  progress,  and  guarantees 
justice  to  all  men  of  all  positions  in  life.  Above 
all  things  Europe  has  held  high  before  our 
minds  the  banner  of  liberty,  through  centuries  of 
martyrdom  and  achievement,  —  liberty  of  con- 
science, liberty  of  thought  and  action,  liberty  in 
the  ideals  of  art  and  literature.  And  because 
Europe  has  won  our  deep  respect,  she  has  be- 
come so  dangerous  for  us  where  she  is  turbu- 
lently  weak  and  false,  —  dangerous  like  poison 
when  it  is  served  along  with  our  best  food. 
There  is  one  safety  for  us  upon  which  we  hope 
we  may  count,  and  that  is,  that  we  can  claim 
Europe  herself,  as  our  ally,  in  our  resistance  to 
her  temptations  and  to  her  violent  encroach- 
ments ;  for  she  has  ever  carried  her  own  standard 
of  perfection,  by  which  we  can  measure  her  falls 
and  gauge  her  degrees  of  failure,  by  which  we 
can  call  her  before  her  own  tribunal  and  put  her 
to  shame,  —  the  shame  which  is  the  sign  of  the 
true  pride  of  nobleness. 

But  our  fear  is,  that  the  poison  may  be  more 
powerful  than  the  food,  and  what  is  strength  in  her 


NATIONALISM    IN    JAPAN  in 

to-day  may  not  be  the  sign  of  health,  but  the  con- 
trary ;  for  it  may  be  temporarily  caused  by  the 
upsetting  of  the  balance  of  life.  Our  fear  is  that 
evil  has  a  fateful  fascination,  when  it  assumes 
dimensions  which  are  colossal,  —  and  though  at 
last  it  is  sure  to  lose  its  centre  of  gravity  by 
its  abnormal  disproportion,  the  mischief  which 
it  creates  before  its  fall  may  be  beyond  repara- 
tion. 

Therefore  I  ask  you  to  have  the  strength  of 
faith  and  clarity  of  mind  to  know  for  certain,  that 
the  lumbering  structure  of  modern  progress,  riv- 
eted by  the  iron  bolts  of  efficiency,  which  runs 
upon  the  wheels  of  ambition,  cannot  hold  together 
for  long.  Collisions  are  certain  to  occur ;  for  it 
has  to  travel  upon  organized  lines,  it  is  too  heavy 
to  choose  its  own  course  freely ;  and  once  it  is 
off  the  rails,  its  endless  train  of  vehicles  is  dis- 
located. A  day  will  come,  when  it  will  fall  in 
a  heap  of  ruin  and  cause  serious  obstruction  to 
the  traffic  of  the  world.  Do  we  not  see  signs  of 
this  even  now  ?  Does  not  the  voice  come  to  us, 
through  the  din  of  war,  the  shrieks  of  hatred,  the 
waitings  of  despair,  through  the  churning  up  of 


112  NATIONALISM 

the  unspeakable  filth  which  has  been  accumulat- 
ing for  ages  in  the  bottom  of  this  nationalism,  — 
the  voice  which  cries  to  our  soul,  that  the  tower 
of  national  selfishness,  which  goes  by  the  name 
of  patriotism,  which  has  raised  its  banner  of  trea- 
son against  heaven,  must  totter  and  fall  with  a 
crash,  weighed  down  by  its  own  bulk,  its  flag 
kissing  the  dust,  its  light  extinguished  ?  My 
brothers,  when  the  red  light  of  conflagration 
sends  up  its  crackle  of  laughter  to  the  stars,  keep 
your  faith  upon  those  stars  and  not  upon  the  fire 
of  destruction.  For  when  this  conflagration  con- 
sumes itself  and  dies  down,  leaving  its  memorial 
in  ashes,  the  eternal  light  will  again  shine  in  the 
East,  —  the  East  which  has  been  the  birth-place 
of  the  morning  sun  of  man's  history.  And  who 
knows  if  that  day  has  not  already  dawned,  and 
the  sun  not  risen,  in  the  Easternmost  horizon  of 
Asia  ?  And  I  offer,  as  did  my  ancestor  rishis, 
my  salutation  to  that  sunrise  of  the  East,  which 
is  destined  once  again  to  illumine  the  whole 
world. 

I  know  my  voice  is  too   feeble  to   raise  itself 
above  the  uproar  of  this  bustling  time,  and  it  is 


NATIONALISM    IN    JAPAN  113 

easy  for  any  street  urchin  to  fling  against  me  the 
epithet  of  'unpractical.'  It  will  stick  to  my 
coat-tail,  never  to  be  washed  away,  effectively 
excluding  me  from  the  consideration  of  all  re- 
spectable persons.  I  know  what  a  risk  one  runs 
from  the  vigorously  athletic  crowds  to  be  styled 
an  idealist  in  these  days,  when  thrones  have 
lost  their  dignity  and  prophets  have  become  an 
anachronism,  when  the  sound  that  drowns  all 
voices  is  the  noise  of  the  market-place.  Yet 
when,  one  day,  standing  on  the  outskirts  of 
Yokohama  town,  bristling  with  its  display  of 
modern  miscellanies,  I  watched  the  sunset  in 
your  southern  sea,  and  saw  its  peace  and  majesty 
among  your  pine-clad  hills,  —  with  the  great 
Fujiyama  growing  faint  against  the  golden  hori- 
zon, like  a  god  overcome  with  his  own  radiance, 
-  the  music  of  eternity  welled  up  through  the 
evening  silence,  and  I  felt  that  the  sky  and  the 
earth  and  the  lyrics  of  the  dawn  and  the  dayfall 
are  with  the  poets  and  idealists,  and  not  with  the 
marketmen  robustly  contemptuous  of  all  senti- 
ments, —  that,  after  the  forgetfulness  of  his  own 
divinity,  man  will  remember  again  that  heaven  is 


NATIONALISM 

always  in  touch  with  his  world,  which  can  never 
be  abandoned  for  good  to  the  hounding  wolves 
of  the  modern  era,  scenting  human  blood  and 
howling  to  the  skies. 


NATIONALISM  IN  INDIA 


NATIONALISM   IN   INDIA 

OUR  real  problem  in  India  is  not  political.  It 
is  social.  This  is  a  condition  not  only  prevailing 
in  India,  but  among  all  nations.  I  do  not  be- 
lieve in  an  exclusive  political  interest.  Politics 
in  the  West  have  dominated  Western  ideals,  and 
we  in  India  are  trying  to  imitate  you.  We  have 
to  remember  that  in  Europe,  where  peoples  had 
their  racial  unity  from  the  beginning,  and  where 
natural  resources  were  insufficient  for  the  in- 
habitants, the  civilization  has  naturally  taken  the 
character  of  political  and  commercial  aggressive- 
ness. For  on  the  one  hand  they  had  no  internal 
complications,  and  on  the  other  they  had  to  deal 
with  neighbours  who  were  strong  and  rapacious. 
To  have  perfect  combination  among  themselves 
and  a  watchful  attitude  of  animosity  against 
others  was  taken  as  the  solution  of  their  prob- 
lems. In  former  days  they  organized  and 

117 


Ii8  NATIONALISM 

plundered,  in  the  present  age  the  same  spirit 
continues  —  and  they  organize  and  exploit  the 
whole  world. 

But  from  the  earliest  beginnings  of  history, 
India  has  had  her  own  problem  constantly  before 
her  —  it  is  the  race  problem.  Each  nation  must 
be  conscious  of  its  mission  and  we,  in  India,  must 
realize  that  we  cut  a  poor  figure  when"  we  are 
trying  to  be  political,  simply  because  we  have  not 
yet  been  finally  able  to  accomplish  what  was 
set  before  us  by  our  providence. 

This  problem  of  race  unity  which  we  have 
been  trying  to  solve  for  so  many  years  has  like- 
wise to  be  faced  by  you  here  in  America.  Many 
people  in  this  country  ask  me  what  is  happening 
as  to  the  caste  distinctions  in  India.  But  when 
this  question  is  asked  me,  it  is  usually  done  with 
a  superior  air.  And  I  feel  tempted  to  put  the 
same  question  to  our  American  critics  with  a 
slight  modification,  "What  have  you  done  with 
the  Red  Indian  and  the  Negro?"  For  you  have 
not  got  over  your  attitude  of  caste  toward  them. 
You  have  used  violent  methods  to  keep  aloof 
from  other  races,  but  until  you  have  solved  the 


NATIONALISM    IN    INDIA  119 

question  here  in  America,  you  have  no  right  to 
question  India. 

In  spite  of  our  great  difficulty,  however,  India 
has  done  something.  She  has  tried  to  make  an 
adjustment  of  races,  to  acknowledge  the  real 
differences  between  them  where  these  exist,  and 
yet  seek  for  some  basis  of  unity.  This  basis  has 
come  through  our  saints,  like  Nanak,  Kabir, 
Chaitnaya  and  others,  preaching  one  God  to  all 
races  of  India. 

In  finding  the  solution  of  our  problem  we  shall 
have  helped  to  solve  the  world  problem  as  well. 
What  India  has  been,  the  whole  world  is  now. 
The  whole  world  is  becoming  one  country  through 
scientific  facility.  And  the  moment  is  arriving 
when  you  also  must  find  a  basis  of  unity  which  is 
not  political.  If  India  can  offer  to  the  world  her 
solution,  it  will  be  a  contribution  to  humanity. 
There  is  only  one  history  —  the  history  of  man. 
All  national  histories  are  merely  chapters  in  the 
larger  one.  And  we  are  content  in  India  to  suffer 
for  such  a  great  cause. 

Each  individual  has  his  self-love.  Therefore 
his  brute  instinct  leads  him  to  fight  with  others 


120  NATIONALISM 

in  the  sole  pursuit  of  his  self-interest.  But  man 
has  also  his  higher  instincts  of  sympathy  and 
mutual  help.  The  people  who  are  lacking  in 
this  higher  moral  power  and  who  therefore  cannot 
combine  in  fellowship  with  one  another  must 
perish  or  live  in  a  state  of  degradation.  Only 
those  peoples  have  survived  and  achieved  civiliza- 
tion who  have  this  spirit  of  cooperation  strong 
in  them.  So  we  find  that  from  the  beginning  of 
history  men  had  to  choose  between  fighting  with 
one  another  and  combining,  between  serving 
their  own  interest  or  the  common  interest  of  all. 
In  our  early  history  when  the  geographical 
limits  of  each  country  and  also  the  facilities  of 
communication  were  small,  this  problem  was 
comparatively  small  in  dimension.  It  was  suffi- 
cient for  men  to  develop  their  sense  of  unity 
within  their  area  of  segregation.  In  those  days 
they  combined  among  themselves  and  fought 
against  others.  But  it  was  this  moral  spirit  of 
combination  which  was  the  true  basis  of  their 
greatness,  and  this  fostered  their  art,  science  and 
religion.  At  that  early  time  the  most  important 
fact  that  man  had  to  take  count  of  was  the  fact 


NATIONALISM    IN    INDIA  121 

of  the  members  of  one  particular  race  of  men 
coming  in  close  contact  with  one  another.  Those 
who  truly  grasped  this  fact  through  their  higher 
nature  made  their  mark  in  history. 

The  most  important  fact  of  the  present  age  is 
that  all  the  different  races  of  men  have  come  close 
together.  And  again  we  are  confronted  with  two 
alternatives.  The  problem  is  whether  the  differ- 
ent groups  of  peoples  shall  go  on  fighting  with  one 
another  or  find  out  some  true  basis  of  reconcilia- 
tion and  mutual  help ;  whether  it  will  be  inter- 
minable competition  or  cooperation. 

I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  those  who 
are  gifted  with  the  moral  power  of  love  and  vision 
of  spiritual  unity,  who  have  the  least  feeling  of 
enmity  against  aliens,  and  the  sympathetic  in- 
sight to  place  themselves  in  the  position  of  others 
will  be  the  fittest  to  take  their  permanent  place 
in  the  age  that  is  lying  before  us,  and  those  who 
are  constantly  developing  their  instinct  of  fight 
and  intolerance  of  aliens  will  be  eliminated.  For 
this  is  the  problem  before  us,  and  we  have  to  prove 
our  humanity  by  solving  it  through  the  help  of 
our  higher  nature.  The  gigantic  organizations 


122  NATIONALISM 

for  hurting  others  and  warding  off  their  blows, 
for  making  money  by  dragging  others  back,  will 
not  help  us.  On  the  contrary,  by  their  crushing 
weight,  their  enormous  cost  and  their  deadening 
effect  upon  the  living  humanity  they  will  seriously 
impede  our  freedom  in  the  larger  life  of  a  higher 
civilization. 

During  the  evolution  of  the  Nation  -the  moral 
culture  of  brotherhood  was  limited  by  geographi- 
cal boundaries,  because  at  that  time  those  boun- 
daries were  true.  Now  they  have  become  imagi- 
nary lines  of  tradition  divested  of  the  qualities 
of  real  obstacles.  So  the  time  has  come  when 
man's  moral  nature  must  deal  with  this  great 
fact  with  all  seriousness  or  perish.  The  first 
impulse  of  this  change  of  circumstance  has  been 
the  churning  up  of  man's  baser  passions  of  greed 
and  cruel  hatred.  If  this  persists  indefinitely  and 
armaments  go  on  exaggerating  themselves  to  un- 
imaginable absurdities,  and  machines  and  store- 
houses envelop  this  fair  earth  with  their  dirt  and 
smoke  and  ugliness,  then  it  will  end  in  a  confla- 
gration of  suicide.  Therefore  man  will  have  to 
exert  all  his  power  of  love  and  clarity  of  vision  to 


NATIONALISM    IN    INDIA  123 

make  another  great  moral  adjustment  which  will 
comprehend  the  whole  world  of  men  and  not 
merely  the  fractional  groups  of  nationality.  The 
call  has  come  to  every  individual  in  the  present 
age  to  prepare  himself  and  his  surroundings  for 
this  dawn  of  a  new  era  when  man  shall  discover 
his  soul  in  the  spiritual  unity  of  all  human  beings. 

If  it  is  given  at  all  to  the  West  to  struggle  out 
of  these  tangles  of  the  lower  slopes  to  the  spiritual 
summit  of  humanity,  then  I  cannot  but  think 
that  it  is  the  special  mission  of  America  to  fulfil 
this  hope  of  God  and  man.  You  are  the  country 
of  expectation,  desiring  something  else  than  what 
is.  Europe  has  her  subtle  habits  of  mind  and  her 
conventions.  But  America,  as  yet,  has  come  to 
no  conclusions.  I  realize  how  much  America  is 
untrammelled  by  the  traditions  of  the  past,  and 
I  can  appreciate  that  experimentalism  is  a  sign  of 
America's  youth.  The  foundation  of  her  glory 
is  in  the  future,  rather  than  in  the  past ;  and  if 
one  is  gifted  with  the  power  of  clairvoyance,  one 
will  be  able  to  love  the  America  that  is  to  be. 

America  is  destined  to  justify  Western  civili- 
zation to  the  East.  Europe  has  lost  faith  in 


124  NATIONALISM 

humanity,  and  has  become  distrustful  and  sickly. 
America,  on  the  other  hand,  is  not  pessimistic  or 
blase.  You  know,  as  a  people,  that  there  is  such 
a  thing  as  a  better  and  a  best ;  and  that  knowl- 
edge drives  you  on.  There  are  habits  that  are 
not  merely  passive  but  aggressively  arrogant. 
They  are  not  like  mere  walls  but  are  like  hedges 
of  stinging  nettles.  Europe  has  been  cultivating 
these  hedges  of  habits  for  long  years  till  they 
have  grown  round  her  dense  and  strong  and  high. 
The  pride  of  her  traditions  has  sent  its  roots  deep 
into  her  heart.  I  do  not  wish  to  contend  that  it 
is  unreasonable.  But  pride  in  every  form  breeds 
blindness  at  the  end.  Like  all  artificial  stimu- 
lants its  first  effect  is  a  heightening  of  conscious- 
ness and  then  with  the  increasing  dose  it  muddles 
it  and  brings  an  exultation  that  is  misleading. 
Europe  has  gradually  grown  hardened  in  her 
pride  of  all  her  outer  and  inner  habits.  She  not 
only  cannot  forget  that  she  is  Western,  but  she 
takes  every  opportunity  to  hurl  this  fact  against 
others  to  humiliate  them.  This  is  why  she  is 
growing  incapable  of  imparting  to  the  East  what 
is  best  in  herself,  and  of  accepting  in  a  right  spirit 


NATIONALISM    IN    INDIA  125 

the  wisdom  that  the  East  has  stored  for  cen- 
turies. 

In  America  national  habits  and  traditions  have 
not  had  time  to  spread  their  clutching  roots 
round  your  hearts.  You  have  constantly  felt  and 
complained  of  its  disadvantages  when  you  com- 
pared your  nomadic  restlessness  with  the  settled 
traditions  of  Europe  —  the  Europe  which  can 
show  her  picture  of  greatness  to  the  best  advan- 
tage because  she  can  fix  it  against  the  background 
of  the  Past.  But  in  this  present  age  of  transition, 
when  a  new  era  of  civilization  is  sending  its  trum- 
pet call  to  all  peoples  of  the  world  across  an  un- 
limited future,  this  very  freedom  of  detachment 
will  enable  you  to  accept  its  invitation  and  to 
achieve  the  goal  for  which  Europe  began  her 
journey  but  lost  herself  midway.  For  she  was 
tempted  out  of  her  path  by  her  pride  of  power  and 
greed  of  possession. 

Not  merely  your  freedom  from  habits  of  mind 
in  the  individuals  but  also  the  freedom  of  your 
history  from  all  unclean  entanglements  fits  you 
in  your  career  of  holding  the  banner  of  civiliza- 
tion of  the  future.  All  the  great  nations  of 


126  NATIONALISM 

Europe  have  their  victims  in  other  parts  of  the 
world.  This  not  only  deadens  their  moral  sym- 
pathy but  also  their  intellectual  sympathy,  which 
is  so  necessary  for  the  understanding  of  races 
which  are  different  from  one's  own.  English- 
men can  never  truly  understand  India  because 
their  minds  are  not  disinterested  with  regard  to 
that  country.  If  you  compare  England  with 
Germany  or  France  you  will  find  she  has  produced 
the  smallest  number  of  scholars  who  have  studied 
Indian  literature  and  philosophy  with  any  amount 
of  sympathetic  insight  or  thoroughness.  This 
attitude  of  apathy  and  contempt  is  natural  where 
the  relationship  is  abnormal  and  founded  upon 
national  selfishness  and  pride.  But  your  history 
has  been  disinterested  and  that  is  why  you  have 
been  able  to  help  Japan  in  her  lessons  in  Western 
civilization  and  that  is  why  China  can  look  upon 
you  with  her  best  confidence  in  this  her  darkest 
period  of  danger.  In  fact  you  are  carrying  all 
the  responsibility  of  a  great  future  because  you 
are  untrammelled  by  the  grasping  miserliness  of  a 
past.  Therefore  of  all  countries  of  the  earth 
America  has  to  be  fully  conscious  of  this  future, 


NATIONALISM    IN    INDIA  127 

her  vision  must  not  be  obscured  and  her  faith  in 
humanity  must  be  strong  with  the  strength  of 
youth. 

A  parallelism  exists  between  America  and 
India  —  the  parallelism  of  welding  together  into 
one  body  various  races. 

In  my  country,  we  have  been  seeking  to  find 
out  something  common  to  all  races,  which  will 
prove  their  real  unity.  No  nation  looking  for  a 
mere  political  or  commercial  basis  of  unity  will 
find  such  a  solution  sufficient.  Men  of  thought 
and  power  will  discover  the  spiritual  unity,  will 
realize  it,  and  preach  it. 

India  has  never  had  a  real  sense  of  nationalism.^ 
Even  though  from  childhood  I  had  been  taught 
that  the  idolatry  of  Nation  is  almost  better  than 
reverence  for  God  and  humanity,  I  believe  I  have 
outgrown  that  teaching,  and  it  is  my  conviction 
that  my  countrymen  will  gain  truly  their  India 
by  fighting  against  that  education  which  teaches 
them  that  a  country  is  greater  than  the  ideals  of 
humanity. 

The  educated  Indian  at  present  is  trying  to 
absorb  some  lessons  from  history  contrary  to  the 


128  NATIONALISM 

lessons  of  our  ancestors.  The  East,  in  fact,  is 
attempting  to  take  unto  itself  a  history  which  is 
not  the  outcome  of  its  own  living.  Japan,  for 
example,  thinks  she  is  getting  powerful  through 
adopting  Western  methods,  but,  after  she  has 
exhausted  her  inheritance,  only  the  borrowed 
weapons  of  civilization  will  remain  to  her.  She 
will  not  have  developed  herself  from  within. 

Europe  has  her  past.  Europe's  strength  there- 
fore lies  in  her  history.  We,  in  India,  must  make 
up  our  minds  that  we  cannot  borrow  other 
people's  history,  and  that  if  we  stifle  our  own, 
we  are  committing  suicide.  When  you  borrow 
things  that  do  not  belong  to  your  life,  they  only 
serve  to  crush  your  life. 

And  therefore  I  believe  that  it  does  India  no 
good  to  compete  with  Western  civilization  in  its 
own  field.  But  we  shall  be  more  than  compen- 
sated if,  in  spite  of  the  insults  heaped  upon  us,  we 
follow  our  own  destiny. 

There  are  lessons  which  impart  information  or 
train  our  minds  for  intellectual  pursuits.  These 
are  simple  and  can  be  acquired  and  used  with 
advantage.  But  there  are  others  which  affect 


NATIONALISM    IN    INDIA  129 

our  deeper  nature  and  change  our  direction  of 
life.  Before  we  accept  them  and  pay  their  value 
by  selling  our  own  inheritance,  we  must  pause  and 
think  deeply.  In  man's  history  there  come  ages 
of  fireworks  which  dazzle  us  by  their  force  and 
movement.  They  laugh  not  only  at  our  modest 
household  lamps  but  also  at  the  eternal  stars. 
But  let  us  not  for  that  provocation  be  precipitate 
in  our  desire  to  dismiss  our  lamps.  Let  us 
patiently  bear  our  present  insult  and  realize  that 
these  fireworks  have  splendour  but  not  perma- 
nence, because  of  the  extreme  explosiveness 
which  is  the  cause  of  their  power,  and  also  of 
their  exhaustion.  They  are  spending  a  fatal 
quantity  of  energy  and  substance  compared  to 
their  gain  and  production. 

Anyhow  our  ideals  have  been  evolved  through 
our  own  history  and  even  if  we  wished  we  could 
only  make  poor  fireworks  of  them,  because  their 
materials  are  different  from  yours,  as  is  also  their 
moral  purpose.  If  we  cherish  the  desire  of  pay- 
ing our  all  for  buying  a  political  nationality  it 
will  be  as  absurd  as  if  Switzerland  had  staked  her 
existence  in  her  ambition  to  build  up  a  navy 


130  NATIONALISM 


powerful  enough  to  compete  with  that  of  Eng- 
land. The  mistake  that  we  make  is  in  thinking 
that  man's  channel  of  greatness  is  only  one  —  the 
one  which  has  made  itself  painfully  evident  for 
the  time  being  by  its  depth  of  insolence. 

We  must  know  for  certain  that  there  is  a  future 
before  us  and  that  future  is  waiting  for  those  who 
are  rich  in  moral  ideals  and  not  in  mere  things. 
And  it  is  the  privilege  of  man  to  work  for  fruits 
that  are  beyond  his  immediate  reach,  and  to 
adjust  his  life  not  in  slavish  conformity  to  the 
examples  of  some  present  success  or  even  to  his 
own  prudent  past,  limited  in  its  aspiration,  but 
to  an  infinite  future  bearing  in  its  heart  the  ideals 
of  our  highest  expectations. 

We  must,  however,  know  it  is  providential 
that  the  West  has  come  to  India.  Yet,  some  one 
must  show  the  East  to  the  West,  and  convince 
the  West  that  the  East  has  her  contribution  to 
make  in  the  history  of  civilization.  India  is  no 
beggar  of  the  West.  And  yet  even  though  the 
West  may  think  she  is,  I  am  not  for  thrusting  off 
Western  civilization  and  becoming  segregated  in 
our  independence.  Let  us  have  a  deep  associa- 


NATIONALISM    IN    INDIA  131 

tion.  If  Providence  wants  England  to  be  the 
channel  of  that  communication,  of  that  deeper 
association,  I  am  willing  to  accept  it  with  all 
humility.  I  have  great  faith  in  human  nature, 
and  I  think  the  West  will  find  its  true  mission. 
I  speak  bitterly  of  Western  civilization  when  I 
am  conscious  that  it  is  betraying  its  trust  and 
thwarting  its  own  purpose.  The  West  must  not 
make  herself  a  curse  to  the  world  by  using  her 
power  for  her  own  selfish  needs,  but  by  teaching 
the  ignorant  and  helping  the  weak,  by  saving 
herself  from  the  worst  danger  that  the  strong  is 
liable  to  incur  by  making  the  feeble  to  acquire 
power  enough  to  resist  her  intrusion.  And  also 
she  must  not  make  her  materialism  to  be  the 
final  thing,  but  must  realize  that  she  is  doing  a 
service  in  freeing  the  spiritual  being  from  the 
tyranny  of  matter. 

"I  am  not  against  one  nation  in  particular,  but 
against  the  general  idea  of  all  nations.  What  is 
the  Nation  ? 

It  is  the  aspect  of  a  whole  people  as  an  or- 
ganized power.  This  organization  incessantly 
keeps  up  the  insistence  of  the  population  on  be- 


132  NATIONALISM 

coming  strong  and  efficient.  But  this  strenuous 
effort  after  strength  and  efficiency  drains  man's 
energy  from  his  higher  nature  where  he  is  self- 
sacrificing  and  creative.  For  thereby  man's 
power  of  sacrifice  is  diverted  from  his  ultimate 
object,  which  is  moral,  to  the  maintenance  of 
this  organization,  which  is  mechanical.  Yet  in 
this  he  feels  all  the  satisfaction  of  moral  exalta- 
tion and  therefore  becomes  supremely  dangerous 
to  humanity.  He  feels  relieved  of  the  urging  of 
his  conscience  when  he  can  transfer  his  responsi- 
bility to  this  machine  which  is  the  creation  of  his 
intellect  and  not  of  his  complete  moral  per- 
sonality. By  this  device  the  people  which  loves 
freedom  perpetuates  slavery  in  a  large  por- 
tion of  the  world  with  the  comfortable  feeling  of 
pride  of  having  done  its  duty ;  men  who  are 
naturally  just  can  be  cruelly  unjust  both  in  their 
act  and  their  thought,  accompanied  by  a  feeling 
that  they  are  helping  the  world  in  receiving  its 
deserts ;  men  who  are  honest  can  blindly  go 
on  robbing  others  of  their  human  rights  for  self- 
aggrandizement,  all  the  while  abusing  the  de- 
prived for  not  deserving  better  treatment.  We 


NATIONALISM    IN    INDIA  133 

have  seen  in  our  everyday  life  even  small  organiza- 
tions of  business  and  profession  produce  callous- 
ness of  feeling  in  men  who  are  not  naturally  bad, 
and  we  can  well  imagine  what  a  moral  havoc 
it  is  causing  in  a  world  where  whole  peoples 
are  furiously  organizing  themselves  for  gaining 
wealth  and  power. 

Nationalism  is  a  great  menace.  It  is  the  partic- 
[ular  thing  which  for  years  has  been  at  the  bottom 
of  India's  troubles.  And  inasmuch  as  we  have 
been  ruled  and  dominated  by  a  nation  that  is 
strictly  political  in  its  attitude,  we  have  tried  to 
develop  within  ourselves,  despite  our  inheritance 
from  the  past,  a  belief  in  our  eventual  political 
jestiny. 

There  are  different  parties  in  India,  with  differ- 
ent ideals.  Some  are  struggling  for  political 
independence.  Others  think  that  the  time  has 
not  arrived  for  that,  and  yet  believe  that  India 
should  have  the  rights  that  the  English  colonies 
have.  They  wish  to  gain  autonomy  as  far  as 
possible. 

In  the  beginning  of  our  history  of  political 
agitation  in  India  there  was  not  that  conflict 


134  NATIONALISM 

between  parties  which  there  is  to-day.  In  that 
time  there  was  a  party  known  as  the  Indian  Con- 
gress; it  had  no  real  programme.  They  had  a 
few  grievances  for  redress  by  the  authorities. 
They  wanted  larger  representation  in  the  Council 
House,  and  more  freedom  in  the  Municipal  gov- 
ernment. They  wanted  scraps  of  things,  but 
they  had  no  constructive  ideal.  Therefore  I  was 
lacking  in  enthusiasm  for  their  methods.  It  was 
my  conviction  that  what  India  most  needed  was 
constructive  work  coming  from  within  herself. 
In  this  work  we  must  take  all  risks  and  go  on 
doing  our  duties  which  by  right  are  ours,  though  in 
the  teeth  of  persecution;  winning  moral  victory 
at  every  step,  by  our  failure,  and  suffering.  We 
must  show  those  who  are  over  us  that  we  have  the 
strength  of  moral  power  in  ourselves,  the  power 
to  suffer  for  truth.  Where  we  have  nothing  to 
show,  we  only  have  to  beg.  It  would  be  mis- 
chievous if  the  gifts  we  wish  for  were  granted  to 
us  right  now,  and  I  have  told  my  countrymen, 
time  and  time  again,  to  combine  for  the  work  of 
creating  opportunities  to  give  vent  to  our  spirit  of 
self-sacrifice,  and  not  for  the  purpose  of  begging. 


NATIONALISM    IN    INDIA  135 

The   party,   however,   lost  power  because   the 
people  soon  came  to  realize  how  futile  was  the 
half  policy  adopted  by  them.     The  party  split, 
and  there  arrived  the  Extremists,  who  advocated 
independence  of  action,  and  discarded  the  begging 
method,  —  the  easiest  method  of  relieving  one's 
mind  from  his  responsibility  towards  his  country. 
Their    ideals    were    based    on    Western    history. 
They  had  no  sympathy  with  the  special  problems 
of   India.     They    did    not    recognize    the    patent 
fact  that  there  were  causes  in  our  social  organiza- 
tion which  made  the  Indian  incapable  of  coping 
with  the  alien.     What  would  we  do  if,  for  any 
reason,  England  was  driven  away  ?     We  should 
simply  be  victims  for  other  nations.     The  same 
social  weaknesses  would  prevail.     The  thing  we, 
in  India,  have  to  think  of  is  this  —  to  remove 
those  social  customs  and  ideals  which  have  gen- 
erated   a   want   of   self-respect   and    a    complete 
dependence    on    those    above    us,  —  a    state    of 
affairs  which  has  been  brought  about  entirely  by 
the  domination  in  India  of  the  caste  system,  and 
the   blind    and    lazy    habit   of   relying   upon    the 
authority    of    traditions    that    are    incongruous 
anachronisms  in  the  present  age. 


136  NATIONALISM 

Once  again  I  draw  your  attention  to  the  diffi- 
culties India  has  had  to  encounter  and  her  struggle 
to  overcome  them..  Her  problem  was  the  prob- 
lem of  the  world  in  miniature.  India  is  too  vast 
in  its  area  and  too  diverse  in  its  races.  It  is 
many  countries  packed  in  one  geographical  re- 
ceptacle. It  is  just  the  opposite  of  what  Europe 
truly  is,  namely  one  country  made  into  many. 
Thus  Europe  in  its  culture  and  growth  has  had 
the  advantage  of  the  strength  of  the  many,  as 
well  as  the  strength  of  the  one.  India,  on  the 
contrary,  being  naturally  many,  yet  adventi- 
tiously one,  has  all  along  suffered  from  the  loose- 
ness of  its  diversity  and  the  feebleness  of  its 
unity.  A  true  unity  is  like  a  round  globe,  it 
rolls  on,  carrying  its  burden  easily ;  but  diversity 
is  a  many-cornered  thing  which  has  to  be  dragged 
and  pushed  with  all  force.  Be  it  said  to  the 
credit  of  India  that  this  diversity  was  not  her 
own  creation  ;  she  has  had  to  accept  it  as  a  fact 
from  the  beginning  of  her  history.  In  America 
and  Australia,  Europe  has  simplified  her  problem 
by  almost  exterminating  the  original  population. 
Even  in  the  present  age  this  spirit  of  extermina- 


NATIONALISM    IN    INDIA  137 

tion  is  making  itself  manifest,  by  inhospitably 
shutting  out  aliens,  through  those  who  themselves 
were  aliens  in  the  lands  they  now  occupy.  But 
India  tolerated  difference  of  races  from  the  first, 
and  that  spirit  of  toleration  has  acted  all  through 
her  history. 

Her  caste  system  is  the  outcome  of  this  spirit 
of  toleration..  For  India  has  all  along  been  try- 
ing experiments  in  evolving  a  social  unity  within 
which  all  the  different  peoples  could  be  held  to- 
gether, yet  fully  enjoying  the  freedom  of  main- 
taining their  own  differences.  The  tie  has  been 
as  loose  as  possible,  yet  as  close  as  the  circum- 
stances permitted.  This  has  produced  some- 
thing like  a  United  States  of  a  social  federation, 
whose  common  name  is  Hinduism. 

India  had  felt  that  diversity  of  races  there  must 
be  and  should  be,  whatever  may  be  its  drawback, 
and  you  can  never  coerce  nature  into  your  narrow 
limits  of  convenience  without  paying  one  day  very 
dearly  for  it.  In  this  India  was  right ;  but  what  she 
failed  to  realize  was  that  in  human  beings  differ- 
ences are  not  like  the  physical  barriers  of  moun- 
tains, fixed  forever  —  they  are  fluid  with  life's 


138  NATIONALISM 

flow,  they  are  changing  their  courses  and  their 
shapes  and  volume. 

Therefore  in  her  caste  regulations  India  recog- 
nized differences,  but  not  the  mutability  which  is 
the  law  of  life.  In  trying  to  avoid  collisions  she 
set  up  boundaries  of  immovable  walls,  thus  giving 
to  her  numerous  races  the  negative  benefit  of 
peace  and  order  but  not  the  positive  opportunity 
of  expansion  and  movement.  She  accepted 
nature  where  it  produces  diversity,  but  ignored 
it  where  it  uses  that  diversity  for  its  world-game 
of  infinite  permutations  and  combinations.  She 
treated  life  in  all  truth  where  it  is  manifold,  but 
insulted  it  where  it  is  ever  moving.  Therefore 
Life  departed  from  her  social  system  and  in  its 
place  she  is  worshipping  with  all  ceremony  the 
magnificent  cage  of  countless  compartments  that 
she  has  manufactured. 

The  same  thing  happened  where  she  tried  to 
ward  off  the  collisions  of  trade  interests.  She 
associated  different  trades  and  professions  with 
different  castes.  It  had  the  effect  of  allaying 
for  good  the  interminable  jealousy  and  hatred  of 
competition  —  the  competition  which  breeds  cru- 


NATIONALISM    IN    INDIA  139 

elty  and  makes  the  atmosphere  thick  with  lies 
and  deception.  In  this  also  India  laid  all  her 
emphasis  upon  the  law  of  heredity,  ignoring  the 
law  of  mutation,  and  thus  gradually  reduced 
arts  into  crafts  and  genius  into  skill. 

However,  what  Western  observers  fail  to  dis- 
cern is  that  in  her  caste  system  India  in  all  serious- 
ness accepted  her  responsibility  to  solve  the  race 
problem  in  such  a  manner  as  to  avoid  all  friction, 
and  yet  to  afford  each  race  freedom  within  its 
boundaries.  Let  us  admit  in  this  India  has 
not  achieved  a  full  measure  of  success.  But  this 
you  must  also  concede,  that  the  West,  being  more 
favorably  situated  as  to  homogeneity  of  races, 
has  never  given  her  attention  to  this  problem, 
and  whenever  confronted  with  it  she  has  tried  to 
make  it  easy  by  ignoring  it  altogether.  And 
this  is  the  source  of  her  anti-Asiatic  agitations  for 
depriving  the  aliens  of  their  right  to  earn  their 
honest  living  on  these  shores.  In  most  of  your 
colonies  you  only  admit  them  on  condition  of 
their  accepting  the  menial  position  of  hewers  of 
wood  and  drawers  of  water.  Either  you  shut 
your  doors  against  the  aliens  or  reduce  them 


140  NATIONALISM 

into  slavery.  And  this  is  your  solution  of  the 
problem  of  race-conflict.  Whatever  may  be  its 
merits  you  will  have  to  admit  that  it  does  not 
spring  from  the  higher  impulses  of  civilization, 
but  from  the  lower  passions  of  greed  and  hatred. 
You  say  this  is  human  nature  —  and  India  also 
thought  she  knew  human  nature  when  she 
strongly  barricaded  her  race  distinctions  by  the 
fixed  barriers  of  social  gradations.  But  we 
have  found  out  to  our  cost  that  human  nature  is 
not  what  it  seems,  but  what  it  is  in  truth ;  which 
is  in  its  infinite  possibilities.  And  when  we  in 
our  blindness  insult  humanity  for  its  ragged 
appearance  it  sheds  its  disguise  to  disclose  to  us 
that  we  have  insulted  our  God.  The  degradation 
which  we  cast  upon  others  in  our  pride  or  self- 
interest  degrades  our  own  humanity  —  and  this 
is  the  punishment  which  is  most  terrible  because 
we  do  not  detect  it  till  it  is  too  late. 

Not  only  in  your  relation  with  aliens  but  also 
with  the  different  sections  of  your  own  society 
you  have  not  brought  harmony  of  reconciliation. 
The  spirit  of  conflict  and  competition  is  allowed 
the  full  freedom  of  its  reckless  career.  And  be- 


NATIONALISM    IN    INDIA  141 

cause  its  genesis  is  the  greed  of  wealth  and  power 
it  can  never  come  to  any  other  end  but  a  vio- 
lent death.  In  India  the  production  of  com- 
modities was  brought  under  the  law  of  social 
adjustments.  Its  basis  was  cooperation  having 
for  its  object  the  perfect  satisfaction  of  social 
needs.  But  in  the  West  it  is  guided  by  the  im- 
pulse of  competition  whose  end  is  the  gain  of 
wealth  for  individuals.  But  the  individual  is 
like  the  geometrical  line;  it  is  length  without 
breadth.  It  has  not  got  the  depth  to  be  able  to 
hold  anything  permanently.  Therefore  its  greed 
or  gain  can  never  come  to  finality.  In  its  length- 
ening process  of  growth  it  can  cross  other  lines 
and  cause  entanglements,  but  will  ever  go  on 
missing  the  ideal  of  completeness  in  its  thinness 
of  isolation. 

In  all  our  physical  appetites  we  recognize  a 
limit.  We  know  that  to  exceed  that  limit  is  to 
exceed  the  limit  of  health.  But  has  this  lust 
for  wealth  and  power  no  bounds  beyond  which 
is  death's  dominion  ?  In  these  national  carni- 
vals of  materialism  are  not  the  Western  peoples 
spending  most  of  their  vital  energy  in  merely 


142  NATIONALISM 

producing  things  and  neglecting  the  creation  of 
ideals  ?  And  can  a  civilization  ignore  the  law  of 
moral  health  and  go  on  in  its  endless  process  of 
inflation  by  gorging  upon  material  things  ?  Man 
in  his  social  ideals  naturally  tries  to  regulate  his 
appetites,  subordinating  them  to  the  higher  pur- 
pose of  his  nature.  But  in  the  economic  world 
our  appetites  follow  no  other  restrictions  but 
those  of  supply  and  demand  which  can  be  ar- 
tificially fostered,  affording  individuals  oppor- 
tunities for  indulgence  in  an  endless  feast  of 
grossness.  In  India  our  social  instincts  imposed 
restrictions  upon  our  appetites,  —  maybe  it 
went  to  the  extreme  of  repression,  —  but  in  the 
West,  the  spirit  of  the  economic  organization 
having  no  moral  purpose  goads  the  people  into 
the  perpetual  pursuit  of  wealth ;  —  but  has  this 
no  wholesome  limit  ? 

The  ideals  that  strive  to  take  form  in  social 
institutions  have  two  objects.  One  is  to  regulate 
our  passions  and  appetites  for  harmonious  de- 
velopment of  man,  and  the  other  is  to  help  him 
in  cultivating  disinterested  love  for  his  fellow- 
creatures.  Therefore  society  is  the  expression  of 


NATIONALISM    IN    INDIA  143 

moral  and  spiritual  aspirations  of  man  which 
belong  to  his  higher  nature. 

Our  food  is  creative,  it  builds  our  body ;  but 
not  so  wine,  which  stimulates.  Our  social  ideals 
create  the  human  world,  but  when  our  mind  is 
diverted  from  them  to  greed  of  power  then  in 
that  state  of  intoxication  we  live  in  a  world  of 
abnormality  where  our  strength  is  not  health 
and  our  liberty  is  not  freedom.  Therefore  po- 
litical freedom  does  not  give  us  freedom  when  our 
mind  is  not  free.  An  automobile  does  not  create 
freedom  of  movement,  because  it  is  a  mere  ma- 
chine. When  I  myself  am  free  I  can  use  the 
automobile  for  the  purpose  of  my  freedom. 

We  must  never  forget  in  the  present  day  that 
those  people  who  have  got  their  political  freedom 
are  not  necessarily  free,  they  are  merely  power- 
ful. The  passions  which  are  unbridled  in  them 
are  creating  huge  organizations  of  slavery  in  the 
disguise  of  freedom.  Those  who  have  made  the 
gain  of  money  their  highest  end  are  unconsciously 
selling  their  life  and  soul  to  rich  persons  or  to 
the  combinations  that  represent  money.  Those 
who  are  enamoured  of  their  political  power  and 


144  NATIONALISM 

gloat  over  their  extension  of  dominion  over  foreign 
races  gradually  surrender  their  own  freedom  and 
humanity  to  the  organizations  necessary  for 
holding  other  peoples  in  slavery.  In  the  so- 
called  free  countries  the  majority  of  the  people 
are  not  free,  they  are  driven  by  the  minority  to 
a  goal  which  is  not  even  known  to  them.  This 
becomes  possible  only  because  people-  do  not 
acknowledge  moral  and  spiritual  freedom  as 
their  object.  They  create  huge  eddies  with  their 
passions  and  they  feel  dizzily  inebriated  with 
the  mere  velocity  of  their  whirling  movement, 
taking  that  to  be  freedom.  But  the  doom  which 
is  waiting  to  overtake  them  is  as  certain  as  death 
-  for  man's  truth  is  moral  truth  and  his  eman- 
cipation is  in  the  spiritual  life. 

The  general  opinion  of  the  majority  of  the 
present  day  nationalists  in  India  is  that  we  have 
come  to  a  final  completeness  in  our  social  and 
spiritual  ideals,  the  task  of  the  constructive  work 
of  society  having  been  done  several  thousand 
years  before  we  were  born,  and  that  now  we 
are  free  to  employ  all  our  activities  in  the  po- 
litical direction.  We  never  dream  of  blaming 


NATIONALISM    IN    INDIA  145 

our  social  inadequacy  as  the  origin  of  our  present 
helplessness,  for  we  have  accepted  as  the  creed 
of  our  nationalism  that  this  social  system  has 
been  perfected  for  all  time  to  come  by  our  an- 
cestors who  had  the  superhuman  vision  of  all 
eternity,  and  supernatural  power  for  making 
infinite  provision  for  future  ages.  Therefore 
for  all  our  miseries  and  shortcomings  we  hold 
responsible  the  historical  surprises  that  burst 
upon  us  from  outside.  This  is  the  reason  why 
we  think  that  our  one  task  is  to  build  a  political 
miracle  of  freedom  upon  the  quicksand  of  social 
slavery.  In  fact  we  want  to  dam  up  the  true 
course  of  our  own  historical  stream  and  only 
borrow  power  from  the  sources  of  other  peoples' 
history. 

Those  of  us  in  India  who  have  come  under  the 
delusion  that  mere  political  freedom  will  make 
us  free  have  accepted  their  lessons  from  the  West 
as  the  gospel  truth  and  lost  their  faith  in  hu- 
manity. We  must  remember  whatever  weakness 
we  cherish  in  our  society  will  become  the  source 
of  danger  in  politics.  The  same  inertia  which 
leads  us  to  our  idolatry  of  dead  forms  in  social 


146  NATIONALISM 

institutions  will  create  in  our  politics  priso 
houses  with  immovable  walls.  The  narrowness 
of  sympathy  which  makes  it  possible  for  us  to 
impose  upon  a  considerable  portion  of  humanity 
the  galling  yoke  of  inferiority  will  assert  itself 
in  our  politics  in  creating  tyranny  of  injustice. 

When  our  nationalists  talk  about  ideals,  they 
forget  that  the  basis  of  nationalism  is  wanting\ 
The  very  people  who  are  upholding  these  ideals 
are  themselves  the  most  conservative  in  their 
social  practice.  Nationalists  say,  for  example, 
look  at  Switzerland,  where,  in  spite  of  race  dif- 
ferences, the  peoples  have  solidified  into  a  nation. 
Yet,  remember  that  in  Switzerland  the  races  can 
mingle,  they  can  intermarry,  because  they  are 
of  the  same  blood.  In  India  there  is  no  common 
birthrights  And  when  we  talk  of  Western  Na- 
tionality we  forget  that  the  nations  there  do  not 
have  that  physical  repulsion,  one  for  the  other, 
that  we  have  between  different  castes.  Have 
we  an  instance  in  the  whole  world  where  a  people 
who  are  not  allowed  to  mingle  their  blood  shed 
their  blood  for  one  another  except  by  coercion 
or  for  mercenary  purposes  ?  And  can  we  ever 


NATIONALISM    IN    INDIA  147 

hope  that  these  moral  barriers  against  our  race 
amalgamation  will  not  stand  in  the  way  of  our 
political  unity  ? 

Then  again  we  must  give  full  recognition  to 
this  fact  that  our  social  restrictions  are  still 
tyrannical,  so  much  so  as  to  make  men  cowards. 
If  a  man  tells  me  he  has  heterodox  ideas,  but 
that  he  cannot  follow  them  because  he  would 
be  socially  ostracized,  I  excuse  him  for  having 
to  live  a  life  of  untruth,  in  order  to  live  at  all. 
The  social  habit  of  mind  which  impels  us  to 
make  the  life  of  our  fellow-beings  a  burden  to 
them  where  they  differ  from  us  even  in  such  a 
thing  as  their  choice  of  food  is  sure  to  persist  in 
our  political  organization  and  result  in  creating 
engines  of  coercion  to  crush  every  rational  dif- 
ference which  is  the  sign  of  life.  And  tyranny 
will  only  add  to  the  inevitable  lies  and  hypocrisy 
in  our  political  life.  Is  the  mere  name  of  free- 
dom so  valuable  that  we  should  be  willing  to 
sacrifice  for  its  sake  our  moral  freedom  ? 

The  intemperance  of  our  habits  does  not  im- 
mediately show  its  effects  when  we  are  in  the 
vigour  of  our  youth.  But  it  gradually  consumes 


148  NATIONALISM 

that  vigour,  and  when  the  period  of  decline  sets 
in  then  we  have  to  settle  accounts  and  pay  off 
our  debts,  which  leads  us  to  insolvency.  In  the 
West  you  are  still  able  to  carry  your  head  high 
though  your  humanity  is  suffering  every  moment 
from  its  dipsomania  of  organizing  power.  India 
also  in  the  heyday  of  her  youth  could  carry  in 
her  vital  organs  the  dead  weight  of  her  social 
organizations  stiffened  to  rigid  perfection,  but  it 
has  been  fatal  to  her,  and  has  produced  a  gradual 
paralysis  of  her  living  nature.  And  this  is  the 
reason  why  the  educated  community  of  India 
has  become  insensible  of  her  social  needs.  They 
are  taking  the  very  immobility  of  our  social 
structures  as  the  sign  of  their  perfection,  —  and 
because  the  healthy  feeling  of  pain  is  dead  in  the 
limbs  of  our  social  organism  they  delude  them- 
selves into  thinking  that  it  needs  no  ministration. 
Therefore  they  think  that  all  their  energies  need 
their  only  scope  in  the  political  field.  It  is  like 
a  man  whose  legs  have  become  shrivelled  and 
useless,  trying  to  delude  himself  that  these  limbs 
have  grown  still  because  they  have  attained 
their  ultimate  salvation,  and  all  that  is  wrong 
about  him  is  the  shortness  of  his  sticks. 


NATIONALISM    IN    INDIA  149 

So  much  for  the  social  and  the  political  regen- 
eration of  India.  Now  we  come  to  her  indus- 
tries, and  I  am  very  often  asked  whether  there 
is  in  India  any  industrial  regeneration  since  the 
advent  of  the  British  Government.  It  must 
be  remembered  that  at  the  beginning  of  the 
British  rule  in  India  our  industries  were  suppressed 
and  since  then  we  have  not  met  with  any  real 
help  or  encouragement  to  enable  us  to  make  a 
stand  against  the  monster  commercial  organiza- 
tions of  the  world.  The  nations  have  decreed 
that  we  must  remain  purely  an  agricultural 
people,  even  forgetting  the  use  of  arms  for  all 
time  to  come.  Thus  India  is  being  turned  into 
so  many  predigested  morsels  of  food  ready  to  be 
swallowed  at  any  moment  by  any  nation  which 
has  even  the  most  rudimentary  set  of  teeth  in 
its  head. 

India,  therefore  has  very  little  outlet  for  her 
industrial  originality.  I  personally  do  not  be- 
lieve in  the  unwieldy  organizations  of  the  present 
day.  The  very  fact  that  they  are  ugly  shows 
that  they  are  in  discordance  with  the  whole 
creation.  The  vast  powers  of  nature  do  not 


150  NATIONALISM 

reveal  their  truth  in  hideousness,  but  in  beauty. 
Beauty  is  the  signature  which  the  Creator  stamps 
upon  his  works  when  he  is  satisfied  with  them. 
All  our  products  that  insolently  ignore  the  laws 
of  perfection  and  are  unashamed  in  their  display 
of  ungainliness  bear  the  perpetual  weight  of 
God's  displeasure.  So  far  as  your  commerce 
lacks  the  dignity  of  grace  it  is  untrue.  "  Beauty 
and  her  twin  brother  Truth  require  leisure, 
and  self-control  for  their  growth.  But  the  greed 
of  gain  has  no  time  or  limit  to  its  capaciousness. 
Its  one  object  is  to  produce  and  consume.  It 
has  neither  pity  for  beautiful  nature,  nor  for 
living  human  beings.  It  is  ruthlessly  ready 
without  a  moment's  hesitation  to  crush  beauty 
and  life  out  of  them,  moulding  them  into  money. 
It  is  this  ugly  vulgarity  of  commerce  which 
brought  upon  it  the  censure  of  contempt  in  our 
earlier  days  when  men  had  leisure  to  have  an 
unclouded  vision  of  perfection  in  humanity. 
Men  in  those  times  were  rightly  ashamed  of  the 
instinct  of  mere  money-making.  But  in  this 
scientific  age  money,  by  its  very  abnormal  bulk, 
has  won  its  throne.  And  when  from  its  eminence 


NATIONALISM    IN    INDIA  151 

of  piled-up  things  it  insults  the  higher  instincts 
of  man,  banishing  beauty  and  noble  sentiments 
from  its  surroundings,  we  submit.  For  we  in 
our  meanness  have  accepted  bribes  from  its  hands 
and  our  imagination  has  grovelled  in  the  dust 
before  its  immensity  of  flesh. 

But  its  unwieldiness  itself  and  its  endless 
complexities  are  its  true  signs  of  failure.  The 
swimmer  who  is  an  expert  does  not  exhibit  his 
muscular  force  by  violent  movements,  but  ex- 
hibits some  power  which  is  invisible  and  which 
shows  itself  in  perfect  grace  and  reposefulness. 
The  true  distinction  of  man  from  animals  is  in 
his  power  and  worth  which  are  inner  and  invisible. 
But  the  present-day  commercial  civilization  of 
man  is  not  only  taking  too  much  time  and  space 
but  killing  time  and  space.  Its  movements  are 
violent,  its  noise  is  discordantly  loud.  It  is 
carrying  its  own  damnation  because  it  is  tram- 
pling into  distortion  the  humanity  upon  which  it 
stands.  It  is  strenuously  turning  out  money  at 
the  cost  of  happiness.  Man  is  reducing  himself 
to  his  minimum,  in  order  to  be  able  to  make 
amplest  room  for  his  organizations.  He  is  de- 


152  NATIONALISM 

riding  his  human  sentiments  into  shame  because 
they  are  apt  to  stand  in  the  way  of  his  machines. 

In  our  mythology  we  have  the  legend  that 
the  man  who  performs  penances  for  attaining 
immortality  has  to  meet  with  temptations  sent 
by  Indra,  the  Lord  of  the  immortals.  If  he  is 
lured  by  them  he  is  lost.  The  West  has  been 
striving  for  centuries  after  its  goal  of  immortality. 
Indra  has  sent  her  the  temptation  to  try  her. 
It  is  the  gorgeous  temptation  of  wealth.  She 
has  accepted  it  and  her  civilization  of  humanity 
has  lost  its  path  in  the  wilderness  of  machinery. 

This  commercialism  with  its  barbarity  of  ugly 
decorations  is  a  terrible  menace  to  all  humanity. 
Because  it  is  setting  up  the  ideal  of  power  over 
that  of  perfection.  It  is  making  the  cult  of  self- 
seeking  exult  in  its  naked  shamelessness.  Our 
nerves  are  more  delicate  than  our  muscles.  Things 
that  are  the  most  precious  in  us  are  helpless  as 
babes  when  we  take  away  from  them  the  careful 
protection  which  they  claim  from  us  for  their 
very  preciousness.  Therefore  when  the  callous 
rudeness  of  power  runs  amuck  in  the  broad-way 
of  humanity  it  scares  away  by  its  grossness  the 


NATIONALISM    IN    INDIA  153 

ideals  which  we  have  cherished  with  the  martyr- 
dom of  centuries. 

The  temptation  which  is  fatal  for  the  strong 
is  still  more  so  for  the  weak.  And  I  do  not  wel- 
come it  in  our  Indian  life  even  though  it  be  sent 
by  the  lord  of  the  Immortals.  Let  our  life  be 
simple  in  its  outer  aspect  and  rich  in  its  inner 
gain.  Let  our  civilization  take  its  firm  stand  upon 
its  basis  of  social  cooperation  and  not  upon  that 
of  economic  exploitation  and  conflict.  How  to 
do  it  in  the  teeth  of  the  drainage  of  our  life-blood 
by  the  economic  dragons  is  the  task  set  before  the 
thinkers  of  all  oriental  nations  who  have  faith 
in  the  human  soul.  It  is  a  sign  of  laziness  and 
impotency  to  accept  conditions  imposed  upon  us 
by  others  who  have  other  ideals  than  ours.  We 
should  actively  try  to  adapt  the  world  powers  to 
guide  our  history  to  its  own  perfect  end. 

From  the  above  you  will  know  that  I  am  not 
an  economist.  I  am  willing  to  acknowledge  that 
there  is  a  law  of  demand  and  supply  and  an 
infatuation  of  man  for  more  things  than  are  good 
for  him.  And  yet  I  will  persist  in  believing  that 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  the  harmony  of  complete- 


154 


NATIONALISM 


ness  in  humanity,  where  poverty  does  not  take 
away  his  riches,  where  defeat  may  lead  him  to 
victory,  death  to  immortality,  and  in  the  com- 
pensation of  Eternal  Justice  those  who  are  the 
last  may  yet  have  their  insult  transmuted  into 
a  golden  triumph. 


THE   SUNSET  OF  THE  CENTURY 


THE  SUNSET  OF  THE  CENTURY 

(Written  in  the  Bengali  on  the  last  day  of  last 
century) 

THE  last  sun  of  the  century  sets  amidst  the  blood- 
red  clouds  of  the  West  and  the  whirlwind  of 
hatred. 

The  naked  passion  of  self-love  of  Nations,  in  its 
drunken  delirium  of  greed,  is  dancing  to  the 
clash  of  steel  and  the  howling  verses  of 
vengeance. 

The  hungry  self  of  the  Nation  shall  burst  in  a 
violence  of  fury  from  its  own  shameless 
feeding. 

For  it  has  made  the  world  its  food, 

And  licking  it,  crunching  it,  and  swallowing  it  in 
big  morsels, 

It  swells  and  swells 


158  NATIONALISM 

Till  in  the  midst  of  its  unholy  feast  descends  the 
sudden  shaft  of  heaven  piercing  its  heart  of 
grossness. 

The  crimson  glow  of  light  on  the  horizon  is  not  the 
light  of  thy  dawn  of  peace,  my  Motherland. 

It  is  the  glimmer  of  the  funeral  pyre  burning  to 
ashes  the  vast  flesh,  —  the  self-love  of  the 
Nation,  —  dead  under  its  own  excess. 

Thy  morning  waits  behind  the  patient  dark  of  the 
East, 

Meek  and  silent. 


Keep  watch,  India. 

Bring  your  offerings  of  worship  for  that  sacred 

sunrise. 
Let  the  first  hymn  of  its  welcome  sound  in  your 

voice,  and  sing, 
"Come,  Peace,  thou  daughter  of  God's  own  great 

suffering. 
Come  with  thy  treasure  of  contentment,  the  sword 

of  fortitude, 

And  meekness  crowning  thy  forehead." 


THE    SUNSET   OF   THE    CENTURY     159 

Be  not  ashamed,  my  brothers,  to  stand  before  the 
proud  and  the  powerful 

With  your  white  robe  of  simpleness. 
Let  your  crown  be  of  humility,  your  freedom  the 

freedom  of  the  soul. 

Build  God's  throne  daily  upon  the  ample  bare- 
ness of  your  poverty 

And  know  that  what  is  huge  is  not  great  and  pride 
is  not  everlasting. 


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